Professional Documents
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American Grand Strategy and The Future of U.S. Landpower
American Grand Strategy and The Future of U.S. Landpower
Strategy
and the Future of
U.S. Landpower
Joseph Da Silva
Hugh Liebert
Isaiah Wilson III
Editors
UNITED STATES
ARMY WAR COLLEGE
PRESS
Carlisle Barracks, PA
and
CENTER for
STRATEGIC
LEADERSHIP and
DEVELOPMENT
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STRATEGIC
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i
Joseph Da Silva
Hugh Liebert
Isaiah Wilson III
Editors
December 2014
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ISBN 1-58487-645-X
iv
CONTENTS
Foreword ....................................................................ix
Raymond T. Odierno
Foreword: The Armys Miracle Moment .............xiii
Robert L. Caslen, Jr.
1. Introduction ...........................................................1
Hugh Liebert
Part I: American Grand Strategy ...........................35
2. The Rise of China and the Decline
of the U.S. Army .................................................37
John Mearsheimer
3. A
merican Grand Strategy and the
Future of Landpower in Historic Context .......55
Scott A. Silverstone
4. Reconsidering American Power .......................81
Isaiah Wilson III
5. The Military Power to Deter, Defend,
Enforce, and Pacify .............................................95
Huba Wass de Czege
Part II: Force Planning and the U.S. Army ........133
6. Strategy and Force Planning in a Time
of Austerity ........................................................135
Michael J. Meese
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viii
FOREWORD
The current international security environment
is characterized by unprecedented uncertainty. In
the Asia-Pacific, our allies adjust to Chinas rise and
hedge against instability coming from North Korea.
In the greater Middle East, the Syrian civil war draws
in powerful state and nonstate actors, Irans weapons program worries its neighbors, the Arab Spring
continues its uncertain course, and we see a growing
Sunni-Shia split throughout the region. In Europe, the
need for a strong North Atlantic Treaty Organization
alliance has become clear as nations along Russias
periphery reevaluate their strategic alignments in the
wake of the situation in Crimea. In Africa, weak states
with ethnic and religious tensions set conditions for
terrorist groups to operate with near impunity. It is in
this uncertain and unstable world that U.S. military
forces will operate for the foreseeable future.
These security challenges require us to remain the
most highly-trained and professional All-Volunteer
land force in the world, uniquely organized with the
capability and capacity to provide expeditionary,
decisive Landpower to the Joint Force, and ready to
perform the range of military operations in support of
combatant commanders to defend the Nation and its
interests at home and abroad, both today and against
emerging threats.
In order to ensure our Army is postured for the
future, we must continue to look forward. We know
that the pace of change is accelerating. The number
of connections between people and societies has increased exponentially. Media can elevate local actions
instantly to strategic importance. Technology and
ix
RAYMOND T. ODIERNO
General, 38th Chief of Staff
U.S. Army
xi
FOREWORD
THE ARMYS MIRACLE MOMENT
In 1980, the United States defeated the Soviet
Union in an Olympic hockey game. The victory was
surprising and dramatic; in short order, it became the
Miracle on Ice, and in 2004, it became the subject of
a feature film, Miracle. But what was happening off the
ice on February 22, 1980, was as significant as what
happened on it. As the victorious American team left
the rink in Lake Placid, NY, other Americans began
their 110th day of captivity in Tehran, Iran. As the Soviet team hung their heads, Soviet troops surged into
Afghanistan. The American victory was a sensation in
part because it seemed an aberration.
The events surrounding the Miracle on Ice foreshadowed our current threat environment. How do
we better anticipate second- and third-order effects
of events? Did the Cold War lens narrow our understanding of possibilities? Are our current lenses,
whether they be post-9/11 or post-Iraq/Afghanistan
wars, as clear as they should be? One may argue that
the forces of globalization have made many threats
more proximate both in space and time. Failing to
fully comprehend global complexities often results in
repercussions right around the corner. We cannot afford an Army that cant see around the corner, which
is why officer education is a security imperative.
I assumed the role of Superintendent of the United
States Military Academy after spending much of the
last decade in combat. I can guarantee that Americas
Army will always respond to our Nations call, but
to be most effective, we must always be preparing
for what lies around the corner. The Army not only
xiii
xiv
xv
xvi
other enablers throughout our government and international communities, and who have the right empathy required to truly empower people on the ground
to make good choices.
The country requires Army leaders of great courage to stay the course without seeing immediate effects. This is particularly hard for an Army culture
and a political process that crave immediate effects.
We are committed to invest in our people to produce
servants to the Nation who can look around corners
and decisively set strategic conditions that best support our national interests, while keeping combat
teams ready. The Army has always been the Nations
strategic hedge, and embracing leader education as its
key component of leader development has been an essential element of being this hedge. To paraphrase the
coach of the 1980 U.S. hockey team, great moments
come from great opportunities. We cannot let this
moment pass.
ENDNOTE
1. For this description of strategic thinking, see Gregory D.
Foster, Teaching Strategic Thinking to Strategic Leaders, The
World & I Online, November 2005, online edition.
xvii
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Hugh Liebert
Hugh Liebert is the lead author of this chapter. Contributing
authors include Robert Chamberlain, Jessica Grassetti, John
Griswold, Todd Hertling, Michael Rosol, and Scott Smitson.
Since men live upon the land and not upon the sea,
great issues between nations at war have always been
decidedexcept in the rarest caseseither by what
your army can do against your enemys territory and
national life, or else by the fear of what the fleet makes
it possible for your army to do.
Julian Corbett,
Some Principles of Maritime
Strategy (1911)1
The decade following September 11, 2001, witnessed a strategic anomaly: an island nation playing
the part of a Landpower. For U.S. leaders worried
about terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and
the frightful prospect of their convergence, the oceans
on the nations flanks, and the friendly neighbors
along its borders seemed suddenly immaterial. As
the United States sought to reconstruct the region that
had sent suicide bombers to its shores, the American
military instrument tilted toward the large land forces
deployed into Afghanistan and Iraq. But now these
wars have waned. Strategies for countering terrorism
have evolved from nation-building to targeted strikes.
An era of austerity has emerged. In grand strategic debates, the United States has again drifted offshore.
As a result, the U.S. military faces a dramatic rebalancing among its services. The absence of an existential
1
threat leaves the U.S. land servicesthe Army, Marines, and Special Operationsfacing an existential
question.2 For a born-again island, just what is Landpower for?
One can attempt an answer in one of two ways.
First, one can start from the toolLandpowerand
consider the range of missions it might be used for.
But this assumes that we know the tool we have at
hand, which is by no means evident. Landpower is
divided internally into a tangle of branchesinfantry, armor, and so oneach of which claims to be the
trunk, while externally it is separated from not only
sea and air power, but from diplomacy, economics,
and other instruments of national power.3 Individuals
within each division act (and often think) as if their
department, service, or branch reflected nature carved
at its joints. But they do notor at least not necessarily. It is therefore preferable to take a second line of approach, and to start from the task rather than the tool.
The tasks that come immediately to view, however,
themselves issue from these very divisions among the
nations tools, such that core national interests can appear distinct when approached militarily, economically, or diplomatically. What is more, it is not clear
that one can consider national interests apart from the
means a nation has to pursue them, since some ends
might exceed a nations grasp. Both task and tool,
then, deserve a say. What is needed is some starting
point that allows one to think outside of the boundaries that structure the nations policy instrument (and
give rise to the parochial preferences of each part),
while allowing means to have their proper say in the
determination of ends.
It is this starting point that grand strategy provides. Grand strategy entails the calculated relation
of means to large ends.4 In foreign policy debates, it
2
GRAND STRATEGY
At present, U.S. grand strategy represents a set of
questions and a method of deliberating upon them
rather than a set of definitive answers, for it is not clear
that the United States has a grand strategy. Some lament this fact and suggest that were a single purpose
to animate the myriad tools at American policymakers
disposalas containment did during the Cold War
American foreign policy would be more successful
than it is.5 Others say that the United States, in fact,
pursues a grand strategyglobal domination to its
detractors, liberal internationalism or the freedom
agenda to its promotersalbeit surreptitiously (and
perhaps foolishly).6 Still others claim that the problem
is not a deficiency of grand strategy but an excess: according to one account, the Barack Obama administration has two grand strategies; on another account, the
United States has consistently pursued four.7 In light
of such deep uncertainty regarding what end might
possibly coordinate U.S. diplomatic, economic, and
military means, it is not surprising that the proper
balance among the military services seems so elusive.
Perhaps it is so hard to know what Landpower is for
because we hardly know what American power is for.
Past as Prologue.
It is in moments of uncertainty regarding future
American grand strategy that American history is
most instructive. Its most general lesson is perhaps the
most important: we have been here before. To those
who worry that the United States has grown weak
relative to rising powers, American history offers up
overcoming U.S. oceanic defenses, and making the international political order more nearly resemble U.S.
domestic political order. Both goals pertain to national
security, but they conceive of the nation differently.
The first considers the American nation one discrete
group among many; the second considers the American nation a potentially universal set of ideas. The first
goal includes issues in American nationalism and the
second in American liberalism. The identity and grand
strategy of the United States, a liberal nation, has been
defined by the tension between the two.11
As a result of these competing traditions, identifying true U.S. national interests at any given time has
been challengingand the present day is no different. Today, those who start from American nationalism tend to locate the overriding national interest in
forestalling the rise of China to regional hegemony,
and to a lesser degree in countering the threats of terrorism and nuclear proliferation.12 Those who start
from American liberalism also worry about the rise
of China, though more for its illiberalism than for its
sheer power, and they worry, too, about the health of
the international economy and international institutions.13 How do these two sets of interests converge
and diverge? What are the U.S. core national interestsenduring, particularly to the present, and going
forward into the 21st century?
Strategy and Force Planning in Times of Austerity.
American policymakers understanding of U.S.
national interests informs their force planning decisions. Which of the military services are built up and
which drawn down, which weapons systems are invested in and which cancelled, what sort of officers
intensive military hardware and decreasing investment in human capital, in fact, the optimal balance?
Can Air-Sea Battle alone deliver what it promises?
What is the role of Landpower in Air-Sea Battle and in
future force planning more generally?
LANDPOWER
To answer this question, we must know what
Landpower is. This is not a straightforward matter, because it is of Landpowers essence that it is not a whole
unto itself, but a component of national military force,
which itself is a component of national power. Landpower, then, is a part of a part. Like each of its sister
services, it embodies a partial insight into geopolitics.
Proponents of sea power know both that the world is
divided into two large islandsfour if one cuts at the
isthmusesand that modern nations struggle to sustain themselves when unable to interact by sea. Proponents of air power know that the complex systems
characteristic of modern states, including populations
and economies, tend to organize themselves into
spokes and potentially vulnerable hubs. Proponents
of Landpower, by contrast, know that human beings
trade and travel by sea and airbut they live on land.
The Future of U.S. Landpower.
Landpowers potential roles within grand strategy
flow from this foundational fact. Because humans live
on land and modern states monopolize coercive force
in order to protect them where they live, Landpower
has the potential to displace foreign states by controlling inhabited terrain. Because modern states aspire
to protect their populations, decisions to deploy pop-
Perhaps the most comprehensive study of austeritys impact on the U.S. Army as a whole is Michael
Meeses Defense Decision Making Under Budget
Stringency: Explaining Downsizing in the United
States Army.18 Meese argues that, when faced with
limited funding, the Army has shown consistent cultural and institutional biases. It has prioritized people
over modernization, short-term readiness, and doctrine. It has preferred a large, hollow, but expandable
force to a smaller, better-manned force. It has opted for
equitable allocations of resources between commands
and branches, even when the threat environment suggested that some commands and branches were more
important than others.19 These inclinations did not
have entirely negative results. The Armys focus on
personnel and leadership during the interwar years,
for instance, expanded its professional education system, which figured prominently in producing a generation of Dwight Eisenhowers and George Marshalls in
the next war. Nevertheless, the intentional neglect of
technological modernization and readiness assumed
that the nation would have significant time to react
to new threats, while lagging technology, the hollow
force, and reluctance to prioritize spending made
development and testing of new doctrine difficult.20
There are exceptions to Meeses model (one might
consider in particular Maxwell Taylors post-Korean
War Pentomic Army21), but there have also been confirmations of it subsequent to the cases he examined.
The post-Vietnam Army, for instance, was an example
of success that worked within the broad limits of the
model, but also recognized the importance of readiness, modernization, sustainability, and doctrine. The
Armys success in Operation DESERT STORM arose
from just these post-Vietnam structural reforms.22
10
What are we today to make of prior efforts at reform under the strictures of austerity? While the existing literature on this theme agrees on the importance of balancing personnel, leadership, doctrine,
readiness, and equipment, a number of questions still
remain.23 To what degree does the Army accurately
identify national threats and create a force to deal with
them, particularly since such choices may lay outside
of the Armys bureaucratic interests in autonomy,
funding, and organizational prestige? How should
the Army inform national strategy and grand strategy
in these periods? Is the Army capable of providing reliable and candid feedback to political leaders about
its full capabilities (and lack of capabilities) under
austerity? To what degree have recent examples of senior officer misconduct damaged the Armys ability to
advise senior civilians? How can senior political and
military leaders incorporate changes in capabilities
into revised and possibly more limited visions of U.S.
grand strategy?
Landpower as a Strategic Means.
As useful as historical cases are, a number of important factors separate contemporary debates over
Landpower from their predecessors. Among these
factors is the prominence of the Reserve Components. Over the past decade, the U.S. Army Reserve
and Army National Guard have made indispensible
contributions to national securityat home and, especially, abroad. As senior Army leaders look ahead
to challenges beyond 2014, the implications of the past
decades experience for the future relationship of Active and Reserve Components are unclear. Creighton
Abrams originated the total force concept in order
11
12
13
14
15
17
18
regular and reserve components into an expeditionary force adept at both traditional Landpower and
amphibious operations. The Australian Army is accordingly organized into three Multi-Role Combat
Brigades, three other combat enabler brigades, and a
well-integrated special operations command. Like the
British Army, then, the Australian Army is beginning
to organize its forces along dedicated functional lines.
Unlike the British Army, the Australian Army sees less
of a distinction between Landpower and sea power,
and instead considers itself to play a role distinct from
boththat of a land-based, amphibious-capable force
able to support a broader national maritime strategy.
Both British and Australian efforts to transform
their Landpower should be of great interest to the
United States. Although the three nations face distinct
security challenges, the similarity of their regimes and
the long precedent of collaboration among their armed
forces suggest that the United States might learn from
their examples. But what lessons are American strategists to take? Do British and Australian reforms suggest how U.S. Landpower should be organized in
order to prevent, shape, and win? How will these
deep changes in the forces of U.S. allies impact multinational plans and operations? Can shared interests
enable closer collaboration and coproduction between
the three armies? Austerity measures and new strategic challenges may have the unintended consequence
of encouraging new levels of collaboration within the
Anglosphere, but it will require farsighted leadership on the part of all three governments to realize this
potentially attractive possibility.
20
21
proposes that the United States ought to focus its contribution to regional security on highly mobile and
lethal off-shore platforms. In the Middle East, Air-Sea
Battle would likely entail the closure of many, if not
all, of the bases in the region, and shifting to underway replenishment, i.e., ship-to-ship refueling. This
change might invite other wealthy or rising powers to
contribute forces of their own; it might also reduce the
U.S. costs of underwriting the worlds shipping and
resource markets. In the Pacific Rim, Air-Sea Battle
implies a heavy investment in strike capabilities at the
expense of ground forces. Proponents of Landpower,
however, argue that Landpower possesses unique attributes that make it in many cases a superior option to
naval and air power, and thus American engagement
in these regions ought to include significant development and augmentation of allies land-based forces.
It is difficult to think clearly about the various
ways forward in both Asia and the Middle East,
though, without a firm understanding of what exactly
the United States intends to do in the coming years.
The demands of offshore balancing are quite different
than those of hegemonic stabilization; working alongside China during its rise is quite different than undertaking containment in the South China Sea. Without clear thinking about national strategy, trying to
think clearly about Landpower is premature. On the
other hand, a number of lesser questions may prove
relevant to the larger question of U.S. strategy in these
regions. What are the intentions of Iran and China
both in terms of their near-abroads and in terms
of investing in global security? How should military
signalsinvestments in new weapons systems, for instancebe understood to reflect intentions? What is
the relative effectiveness of land forces compared to
22
23
24
descended back into the sea. He knew that Great Britains shores had kept her (mostly) innocent of standing
armies, and, in so doing, had preserved her liberty
the very same liberty he and his heirs would enjoy, if
only they kept in view what has come to be called the
stopping power of water. Hamilton considered it a
sort of special providencethe benevolence of nature
and, perhaps, of natures God.
But water starts as much as it stops. It is true, as
Corbett knew, that humans live on land, but, for most
of their history (and still today), humans have travelled
more rapidly through elements foreign to themthe
sea and now the air. Hamilton knew this, too. He envisioned a great trading nationthe worlds emporium,
ideally positioned between the two ends of the globes
great land mass, destined to be more pivotal to global
communication and commerce than even her British parent had been. Here, too, Hamilton has proven
prescient.
What Hamilton did not knowor at least, chose
not to dwell on in the writings that have come down
to usis how waters starting power could work at
counterpurposes from its stopping power. He had before him a cautionary tale to this effect: an island playing the part of a Landpower and failing. The United
States has achieved the insularity Hamilton foresaw;
it has met the commercial destiny Hamilton prophesied; it now remains for it to enter into regions Hamilton left uncharted. How should an island nation, no
longer as insular as islands ought to be, conceive of
Landpower?
25
ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 1
1. Julian Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy,
Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1988 [1911], p. 16.
2. Funding for Special Operations has not recently faced the
same scrutiny as funding for the Army and Marines; however,
debates about the core identity of Special Operationsbetween
those who favor direct tactics like targeted raids and those who
favor indirect tactics like building partner nations militaries
are more intense now than perhaps ever before. On this and related debates, see in particular Linda Robinson, The Future of U.S.
Special Forces, Council Special Report No. 66, New York: Council
on Foreign Relations, April 2013. For considerations of how the
Army and Marines might coordinate with Special Operations, see
Fernando Lujn, Light Footprints: The Future of American Military
Intervention, Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, March 2013; and John Nagl, Institutionalizing Adaptation: Its
Time for a Permanent Army Advisor Corps, Washington, DC: Center
for a New American Security, June 2007.
3. On the varied worldviews and priorities of U.S. military
branches, see in particular Carl Builder, Masks of War: American
Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.
4. For this formulation, see John Lewis Gaddis, What is
Grand Strategy? Lecture delivered at Duke University, February 26, 2009, available from tiss.sanford.duke.edu/DebatingGrand
StrategyDetails.php.
5. For lamentations of the absence of U.S. grand strategy, see
the Gaddis lecture cited previously and the sources collected by
Daniel Drezners article on the theme. See Drezner, Does Obama
Have a Grand Strategy? Why We Need Doctrines in Uncertain
Times, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 4, July-August, 2011, pp. 57-68,
especially p. 57.
6. John Mearsheimer, Imperial By Design, The National
Interest, Vol. 111, January-February, 2011, pp. 16-34.
26
12. The 2010 National Security Strategy lists the security of the
United States, its citizens, and U.S. allies and partners as the first
of Americas enduring interests, p. 7.
13. The second, third, and fourth of 2010 National Security
Strategys enduring interests have to do with the economy, universal values, and the international order, p. 7.
14. On the pivot to Asia, see in particular Hillary Clinton,
Americas Pacific Century, Foreign Policy, November 2011; and
Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century
Defense, Washington, DC: DoD, 2012.
15. On Air-Sea Battle, see Andrew Krepinevich, Why AirSea
Battle? Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2010; and Jan van Tol, AirSea Battle: A Point-of-Departure Operational Concept, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and
Budgetary Assessments, 2010.
16. As the military entered its last major period of budget
stringency in the 1990s, for example, International Security, the
leading academic journal in security studies, published a wealth
of work in a single edition recommending new policies, but few
works that attempted to evaluate a period of stringency after
the fact. See, for example, Gordon Adams and Stephen Alexis
Cain, Defense Dilemmas in the 1990s, International Security,
Vol. 13, No. 4, Spring 1989; Robert F. Ellsworth, Maintaining
U.S. Security in an Era of Fiscal Pressure, International Security,
Vol. 13, No. 4, Spring 1989, pp. 16-24; Cindy Williams, Strategic
Spending Choices, International Security, Vol. 13, No. 4, Spring
1989, pp. 24-35.
17. Quality historical works do examine specific periods of
stringency, but even in these works, stringency itself is not the key
study variable, and works, such as Williamson Murray and Allan Millett, Military Innovation in the Interwar Period, Cambridge,
MA: Cambridge University Press, 1996, rarely focus exclusively
on the Army as an organization.
18. Michael Meese, Defense Decision Making Under Budget
Stringency: Explaining Downsizing in the United States Army,
28
29
31
33
PART I:
35
CHAPTER 2
THE RISE OF CHINA AND THE
DECLINE OF THE U.S. ARMY
John Mearsheimer1
What is the future of U.S. Landpower? This is another way of asking: What is the future of the U.S.
Army? The Army has been the most important of the
three major military services over the past decade,
mainly because of the prominence of the Afghanistan
and Iraq wars. The Air Force and especially the Navy
have played secondary roles in those conflicts. I have
spoken with more than a few officers from those two
services over the past decades who have complained
about how all the attention focused on Afghanistan
and Iraq has been detrimental to the interests of the
Air Force and the Navy.
This situation is likely to change significantly in
the next 2 decades, and the Army is likely to be treated as the least important of the three services, which
means it will be allocated less of the Pentagons resources than either the Air Force or the Navy. Indeed,
the Army will probably have to work extremely hard
to secure large numbers of defense dollars.
THE CHANGING THREAT ENVIRONMENT
We are at what I would call a plastic moment in the
history of Americas relations with the wider world.
Fundamental changes are taking place in our strategic
environment that are likely to have a profound effect
on U.S. grand strategy, and on the Army in particular. To be more specific, three changes are occurring in
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
Pact ground forces on the other side of the inter-German border. Thus, when the Vietnam War ended in
1975 and the United States began to focus laser-like on
Europe, it was easy to make the case for maintaining a
formidable American Army.
The geography of Asia, however, looks markedly
different from Europe. Most importantly, there is no
equivalent of the Central Front in the Asia-Pacific region. When you look at the possible conflict scenarios
involving the United States and China, it is hard to
see where a large American Army would be needed.
This is not to say that no U.S. ground forces will be
needed in the region, just that it is hard to imagine
a major conventional war on land between America
and China.
POTENTIAL CONFLICT SCENARIOS
Probably the most Army-friendly contingency in
Asia is a possible war on the Korean Peninsula. Remember that more than 200,000 U.S. Army troops
fought the Chinese Army between 1950 and 1953.
While it is certainly possible to imagine a future war
between South and North Korea, this time the Republic of Korea (South Korea or ROK) military will be able
to handle the North Korean Army. In fact, the ROK
forces are likely to clobber the Norths Army. None of
this is to deny that the United States could get dragged
into a future Korean conflict. After all, we have about
19,000 troops stationed in South Korea, and it is imperative that they remain there for purposes of trying to convince South Koreans that our nuclear umbrella is firmly in place over their heads. Regardless,
any American involvement in another Korean war
would most likely involve relatively small numbers
44
of U.S. ground forces. It is difficult to imagine a repeat of the conflict that took place in Korea during the
early-1950s.
The other potential conflict scenarios in the AsiaPacific region that might involve American military
forces include 1) Taiwan, 2) the Senkaku/Diaoyu
Islands, and 3) the South China Sea. None of them,
however, are likely to involve large-scale American
ground forces. Indeed, it is not even clear that U.S.
troops would be involved in any of those fights. If they
were needed, it might very well be the Marinesnot
the Armythat do the fighting.
The United States and a powerful China will not
only compete in the Asia-Pacific region; they are also
sure to do so in the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea
as well, because those large bodies of water link China
with the Persian Gulf. China will want to control those
waters because large amounts of gas and oil destined
for China move across them. However, the U.S. Navy
and countries like India will bear the burden of countering Chinese efforts to control those critically important sea lines of communication. The Army will play a
minor role at best.
The Persian Gulf itself is the one area where the
Army is likely to have an important role in the decades ahead. The United States, as noted, has a deepseated interest in making sure that no country dominates that strategically important region. The main
threat to become a regional hegemon is Iran, which
is why the Ronald Reagan administration supported
Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War that ran from
1980 to 1988.
American policymakers can deal with threats in
the Gulf in basically two ways: 1) they can rely on
other countries in the region to check an aggressor, as
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CHAPTER 3
AMERICAN GRAND STRATEGY
AND THE FUTURE OF LANDPOWER
IN HISTORIC CONTEXT
Scott A. Silverstone
One of the maxims in the field of international relations is that the future is inherently uncertain. Most
observers, however, refuse to accept this proposition
at face value. For those responsible for making decisions in the present, those who must develop budget
priorities, make force structure choices, train our military professionals, and determine where in the world
they should deploy, the inherent uncertainty of the
future is a tremendous challenge they cannot avoid.
Decisions made in the near term about the future of
Landpower will have deep structural effects lasting
years, so the task begs for some method or framework for making the right choices. To deal with this
problem, we typically develop theories that help us
generalize about causes of war and peace and hope
that their predictive power will allow us to prepare
for the future. We follow trends in economic performance, in technology, in political and social phenomena, and in environmental variables that might reveal
future trajectories in the threat environment. We develop forecasting models and track prediction markets that seek to open a window on world events to
come. Unfortunately, despite the great energy poured
into the endeavor, systematic research has shown
that with time, expert predictions prove to be grossly
disappointing.1
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and pay severe costs to secure over the past 100 years is
what can be called grand area access. In its simplest
terms, the objective has been to maintain open access
to, and a balanced political order within, Europe, East
Asia, and the Middle East. It is a simple strategic concept that links the costliest commitments of American
power in our history: two million Soldiers mobilized
and deployed to Europe with the American Expeditionary Force by the end of World War I; a total of
16 million Americans in uniform to support the fight
across the European and Pacific theaters in World War
II, over 8 million of them in the U.S. Army3; millions
more who helped shoulder the burden of the U.S. commitment to the defense of Western Europe during the
Cold War and who fought in Korea and Vietnam; and
over 600,000 service personnel for the fight against
Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. While the world has
changed in profound ways since 1917, nothing has
altered the importance of this core objective for the
United States in the years between World War I and
the early-21st century.
There is a two-pronged explanation for such heavy
commitments of American blood and treasure over
such a long period of time. One explanation emphasizes a harm to avoidpreventing a hostile state from
establishing hegemonic control in one of these key
regions; the other explanation emphasizes the great
gains to be made for American domestic valuesaccess to these regions is seen as an indispensible buttress to liberty and prosperity. Neither explanation
alone can adequately account for how Americans
have conceived of the critical importance of these geographic regions to American interests since the early20th century, so both must be explored as components
of U.S. strategy for the future.
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NSC 68.
We find this exact strategic outlook underpinning
Americas assessment of the Soviet threat and the containment response, just a few years after victory over
Germany and Japan rescued grand area access from
the violent expansion of these aspiring hegemons.
Specifically, grand area access is the core strategic objective articulated in NSC 68, the seminal document of
the early Cold War that made the case for containment
as the long-term American approach to the postwar
threat environment. While NSC 68 had its origins in a
different historic context, the document still has great
value for our contemporary study of Landpower,
past and present, because it presents a simply articulated characterization of the United States of America
and the grand strategic political ends that its foreign
policy must ultimately support. Just as important,
NSC 68 presents a claim about the global conditions
necessary to achieve those political ends that has enduring relevance as a grand strategic perspective connecting at least 100 years of history to the present and
the future.
According to NSC 68, the fundamental purpose
of the United States . . . is to assure the integrity and
vitality of our free society. One of the realities it
claims to emerge as a consequence of this purpose
is our determination to create conditions under
which our free and democratic system can live and
prosper.9 In other words, the vitality of a free society
and the prosperity of its citizens depend on maintaining [a] material environment in which they flourish. Logically and in fact, therefore, the Kremlins
challenge to the United States is directed not only to
our values but to our physical capacity to protect their
environment.10
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Of course, the Army will continue to play a critical role in deterrence and defense on the Korean
peninsula. North Korea remains what we might call
a legacy threat, born in a radically different global
context that no longer exists, yet it lingers as a legitimate threat to our South Korean ally. This threat matters only because South Korea is a critical member of
the Asian grand area that the United States is determined to protect. But beyond this particular hotspot,
Landpower planners should be focused on how this
particular type of military force might support U.S. efforts to maintain access and partnerships across the
wider region.
Strategic Objective #2: Hemispheric Policing.
Each state has a special interest in its own geographic region, its security environment, the political
character of its neighbors, and the regions distinctive
economic opportunities and disruptions. States have
a special interest in their regions migration patterns,
the movement of goods, disease, and criminals, and a
keen interest in the rules that shape regional behavior
and the rights that neighboring states claim. Simple
geographic proximity suggests that potential dangers
and opportunities have greater impact when they appear in the immediate neighborhood rather than halfway around the world.
The United States exemplifies the special attention that states tend to pay to regional affairs. In fact,
the United States has more forcefully articulated its
special interest, and its special obligation and right,
to shape its own region than any other major state.
President James Monroes doctrine of 1823 was an
expression of exceptionalism and separation of the
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Senator Sam Nunn, and retired General Colin Powell managed to convince Raul Cedras to leave. The
planned invasion was converted into a peacekeeping and nation-building operation, but it was a close
run thing.
Strategic Objective #3: Contain and Neutralize
Remote Projectable Threats.
Since 2001, U.S. Landpower has been consumed
with this strategic objective. The case of Afghanistan
is a perfect illustration of the problem and the goals
sought by American leaders. Under Taliban rule, Afghanistan harbored al-Qaeda, which used this secure
territorial base to plan, organize, train, and direct its
jihadists in attacks against U.S. targets in Africa, Yemen, and in the homeland. In the words of Ambassador Michael Sheehan, former Assistant Secretary
of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity
Conflict, Afghanistan became a sanctuary of impunity, an immensely valuable remote and unmolested
zone within which U.S. enemies could develop and
execute operations.24
Since the invasion of Afghanistan, which had as its
strategic goals the destruction not only of al-Qaeda but
the elimination of this particular unmolested base of
operations, al-Qaeda and affiliate organizations have
migrated, seeking new sanctuaries of impunity in
Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and across North Africa.
While this threat has morphed since 2001, the United
States still has a keen strategic interest in preventing
the emergence of true sanctuaries in remote regions
of the world that violent extremists will use to build,
plan, and deploy. Few dispute this objective. Yet the
continuing challenge is to determine the best ways to
deny these sanctuaries.
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downfall of the Baathist regime, the emergent insurgency and sectarian violence, and mere opportunism. Once the jihadist threat emerged, however, the
fear that a post-Saddam Iraq might actually become a
sanctuary of impunity became a key motive for continuing U.S. counterinsurgency and nation-building
operations. As part of the broader U.S. counterterrorist
strategy in these years, the hope was that if Iraq could
be developed into a tolerant, prosperous, representative democracy, it would be a model for the rest of the
Islamic world to adopt and thus drain the swamp
that supported violent ideologies and terrorist action.
While the specter of terrorists in Iraq was part of
the larger strategic narrative in this war, the claim that
Iraq had active weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
programs took a central role in how the remote threat
was defined, and the heavy Landpower option was
justified. Along with terrorism, WMD proliferation
has been defined as the most serious remote threat
faced by the United States and its allies since the early1990s. Given that Iraq had no actual WMD programs,
this war will never serve as a positive case of successful counterproliferation that will inspire future invasions of other suspected proliferators. Moreover, the
high costs and frustrations it produced will continue
to generate Gates-like reluctance to use heavy armies
in this way again. It is virtually inconceivable that
U.S. leaders will purposefully replicate the Iraq model
as a way to neutralize the Iranian nuclear program.
However, it is conceivable that airstrikes against
Irans nuclear infrastructure will set us climbing up
an escalation ladder that eventually leads to consideration of some form of Landpower commitment to establish escalation dominance and end this conflict on
U.S. terms. Army planners would be wise to consider
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CONCLUSION
This chapter has not ventured specific predictions
about developments in world affairs that the United
States must confront in the years ahead. Instead, it has
been a retrospective on how U.S. leaders have defined
core strategic objectives over the past 100 years. Each
of these strategic objectives has been met with a mixture of national resources, tools of potential power,
and a mixture of concepts for how to achieve them.
This includes the use of American Landpower. While
the chapter began by warning against the prospects
of prediction as the key to answering our core questionwhat is the future of Landpower?it will end
with a prediction of sorts. The four strategic objectives discussed previouslygrand area access, hemispheric policing, containing and neutralizing remote
projectable threats, and containing and mitigating
politically-driven humanitarian criseswill endure
in U.S. foreign policy. As a starting point, Landpower
planners should take a hard look at how this particular form of power might contribute to these enduring
goals and interests.
ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 3
1. Philip E. Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment: How Good
is it? How Can We Know? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2006.
2. Terms of Reference, National Security Council (NSC) 68:
United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, Washington, DC: NSC, April 14, 1950.
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CHAPTER 4
RECONSIDERING AMERICAN POWER
Isaiah Wilson III
The author would like to acknowledge and thank members
of the Department of Social Sciences faculty at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, who participated in
development of the guiding theme paper for the 62nd Student
Conference on U.S. Affairs (SCUSA), and in particular the conferences executive secretary, Major Irvin Oliver, for their collective insights and research in the early development of this
authors power vs. force thesis put forward in more mature
form in this chapter. Parts of this chapter have appeared previously in The True Tragedy of American Power, Parameters,
Vol. 43, No. 4, Winter 2013-14, pp. 15-26, and Thinking Beyond
War: Civil-Military Relations and Why America Fails to Win the
Peace, Revised Edition, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
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military or economic solutions; even right seems vulnerable to might. Elements of power other than force
thus can far too easily fade from the strategists view.
Newtons force was couched always and everywhere in these complicating variables; naked force
alone was a monstrosity, incapable of manifesting as
power. For long stretches of its history, the United
States shared something like Newtons sensibility.
The basis of the constitutional discussions during our
founding centered on how to maximize liberty and
prosperity, and how to shape and order force with
a view to these ends. Force was viewed as an instrument because the Founders understood themselves to
be establishing a nation of laws, not of men (as John
Adams put it), a regime in which force was prevented
from endangering popular rulein short, a republic.
The goal was sufficient centralization of force to ensure citizens rights and no more than the minimum
necessary to protect and ensure liberty. By using principle to restrain force, the ends of government to limit
and define its means, the Founders understood, the
nation could generate true power.
Where does American power stand today? U.S.
force is unsurpassed; American power, however, is
limited by appearing only in the guise of force. American military force has had a mixed record of success,
particularly over the past decade in Afghanistan and
Iraq. These and other irregular wars and military-humanitarian operations (MHOs) the United States has
engaged in have demonstrated the inability of mere
military force to generate the conditions necessary to
resolve conflicts: political agreement among internal
factions, improved capacity in host nation civil governance, and increased economic development. Force
of arms can bring down regimes with far greater ease
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The Air-Sea Battle concept is an operational approach that prioritizes assured access to the global
commons of the sea, air, space, and cyberspace domains while relying heavily on continued American
air and naval superiority. It also envisions a greater
reliance on regional alliances and an increased acceptance of risk in other areas. The leading advocate
of Air-Sea Battle, Dr. Andrew Krepinevich argues
that it amounts to a strategy of assured access [and]
reflects a sense of what the U.S. military can realistically achieve.3 The realism of Air-Sea Battle arises
from both its suitability to a nation unwilling to pay
the high costs of maintaining a standing army and its
suitability to the high technology U.S. economy. It is a
strategy that speaks simultaneously to American fiscal
anxiety and to American economic and military pride.
But is Air-Sea Battle in fact a strategy? Even its advocates seem uncertain about the appropriate scope
of Air-Sea Battle. Seen as a new paradigm for national military strategy, however, Air-Sea Battle raises
a host of difficult questions. Foremost among them is
the place of Landpower. What size and type of force
structure would be necessary to complement air and
naval assets? Air-Sea Battle also rests on a questionable
notion of deterrence. Air-Sea Battle represents a capability that can be used against our enemies but lacks a
strong signaling mechanism to show resolve. Carriers
and aircraft come and go quickly into a region; they
are excellent signals of capability but poor signals of
commitment. Without demonstrating resolve, it is difficult to reassure friends and fence-sitters in regions
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ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 4
1. Francis Beer, Meanings of War and Peace, College Station,
TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2001, p. 6.
2. Huba Wass de Czege, The Hard Truth About Easy Fighting Theories: The Army is Needed Most When Specific Outcomes
Matter, Landpower Essay No. 13-2, April 2013, p. 1, available
from www.ausa.org/publications/ilw/DigitalPublications/Documents/
lpe13-2/files/0.html.
3. Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., Strategy in a Time of Austerity: Why the Pentagon Should Focus on Assuring Access, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 91, No. 6, November-December, 2012, pp. 58-69,
especially 67.
4. Sir Julian Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1988, p. 16.
5. Ibid., p. 336.
6. See Wilsons Chapter 19, this volume.
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CHAPTER 5
THE MILITARY POWER TO DETER, DEFEND,
ENFORCE, AND PACIFY
Huba Wass de Czege
Any discussion of grand strategy must begin with
a common understanding of the eternal logic for keeping and employing arms. Western political elites responsible for recent defense policy have been sadly
innocent of this field of knowledge, believing that new
weapons and modern concepts have overturned ancient wisdoms. Both in antiquity and today, application of military force is justifiable only if it has a high
probability of causing humans to react as intended.
Only then does applied force become power.
As consequential as military power is, it is surprising that the language with which concepts of military power are formulated and expressed is so crude.
Thinking in terms of air power, sea power, Landpower, space power, and cyber power may be useful to the
proponents of these categories of power in budget
battles at home, but it impedes clear and imaginative
thought about defense policy and military strategies
toward the world at large. These powers promise the
control of certain conceptual domains, but the sort
of control envisioned is difficult to achieve in water, air, and space, while being nearly impossible on
landwhere most human activity takes place. The
very term Landpower therefore confuses more than
it clarifies.
Instead of classifying powers according to their
domains, strategists would do better to divide power
according to its functions. Military power can deter
attack, defend against attack when deterrence fails,
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attack in order to impose and enforce a new and better peace where an intolerable one exists, and pacify
an intolerably violent situation. Strategists through
the ages have brought military force to bear for these
broad categories of purpose, and so will strategists today. Strategists have not always been successful, however. Even when subject to overwhelming military
force, humans do not always react as intended. This
is so because force is not power, and because force
potential is transformed by a logic specific to each
of these broad categories of strategic purpose. Those
making the very consequential decisions of national
and military strategy must be aware of these logical
distinctions, or their strategies will fail.
WHAT IS MILITARY POWER?
Before turning to the specific functions of military
powerto deter attack, defend against attack, attack
to enforce a better peace, and pacify a violent and
armed populationit will be useful to address a more
general question: What is military power? Wise strategists think of power, to whatever purpose it is put,
in relative rather than absolute terms. All the sides in
a conflict try to cause the humans on the other side
to react as they intend. The outcome of the conflict is
determined by a relative superiority of power specific to the case at the essential points of confrontation. Thus relative military power is not determined
by mere comparisons of the military potential inherent in the capabilities each side has at hand. Although
the amount and quality of military capabilities and
resources available to each adversary are important,
relative power is determined in the main by how these
capabilities and resources affect the humans on each
side of the conflict when they are brought to bear.
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within range of critical targets are necessary ingredients of this element of combat power.
There has been a tendency to focus exceedingly
on kinetic killing potential in defense planningin
essence, on weapons and their precise and lethal munitions. But for weapons and munitions to produce
valid firepower effects, they depend highly on relevant knowledge; strategic mobility; flexible sustainment; and robust, integrated command and control. In
the recent military interventions and in the wargames
the Services use to explore future force requirements,
weapons and munitions were abundantly available
at every stage. But shortages in the key enablers of
firepower make it difficult to bring this impressive
potential to bear. The tendency, ahead of operations,
is to consider these enablers burdensome overhead,
and to underestimate the value of investments in having more of them. Analytical wargames replicate lethal effects easily, but the enablers not as well. This
biases outcomes toward the contribution of weapons
and munitions based on their numbers rather than on
the lethal effects they can realistically produce. For instance, it will be very difficult to gather the volumes
of information needed to perform the high tempo
large-scale firepower-based operations some strategists imagine for the future. In reality, the capacity to
produce relevant knowledge will limit the tempo of
any such operations. When that capacity does not materialize in actual situations, the tempo and effectiveness of firepower-based operations will slow.
Protection is the shielding of the fighting potential
of the force so that it can be applied at the decisive
time and place. Protection has two components. The
first includes all actions to counter the enemys firepower and maneuver by making soldiers, systems,
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or afloat. The replacement of analog with digital technology greatly speeds the kill chain, and renders it
far more efficient. Elaborately integrated air defenses
of industrialized armed forces are surveillance strike
complexes that can evolve to be much more potent
and far-reaching.
Though highly effective, the logic of surveillance
or defensive strike networks is relatively simple, consistent, and predictable. Any penetration of the area
of surveillance of a defensive strike network is immediately identified friend or foe, an engagement decision is made, the best available response is selected,
targeting data is sent to the responding weapon system, the target is engaged, damage is assessed, and
the cycle may repeat again if required. This entire kill
chain can be automated, or it could contain human
nodes as sensors or decisionmakers. Some elements
could be very low tech. The power of integrated strike
networks derives from the combination of the very
short time from initial sensing to striking (making it
more likely dynamic targets are engaged) and from
the precision and potency of the strike.
The possibilities for various kinds of integrated
strike networks will explode. The science of automatic
target recognition is advancing at great speed. Civilian wireless networks are rapidly expanding around
the world, and both wireless technology and computer processors are being integrated in more commonly
available devices daily. The very technologies most
likely to proliferate soonest will prompt rational opponents fearing attack to defend from urban web
defenses covered by integrated defensive strike networks. Savvy irregulars, for instance, will use rapidly
proliferating technologies to deny access to large cities
(or specific urban neighborhoods), jungle and mountain redoubts, and their base areas.
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Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Warden%27s_Five_Rings.svg.
necessary in a war with rising powers, they suggested. These authors revised Wardens concentric rings
theory to distant blockading the flow of goods and
resources from and to an adversary powers economy
for as long as it takes for its leadership to come to
terms. And they argued that, applied long enough and
competently, distant blockadetheir form of shock
and awewould prove decisive. In its fundamental
assumptions, Air-Sea Battle is revised Warden. Like
Wardens theory, Air-Sea Battle has already proven
to be widely popular, but like Wardens theory, it neglects the decisive element of military power: the capacity to force a change in the status quo regardless of
the opponents decisions.
4. The Weakness of One-Armed Attack. Proponents
of concentric ring theory and Air-Sea Battle share a
common flaw: they use only the arm of strategy that
attempts to communicate with the intellect or will of
opposing decisionmakers, and not the arm of strategy
that attempts to force a change in the status quo regardless of the opponents decisions. Some will argue
that only one arm of offensive strategy is required because, according to Wardens concentric rings theory,
air forces can essentially deprive the opponent of the
capacity to decide since modern states (and modern
warmaking) depend on networks vulnerable to air
strikes. But will such operation enforce our will on the
enemy? While leaders cannot communicate as before
and the country may not be able to fight as before, the
fighting will not be over after this first major shock
and awe battle and a desirable peace will not be in
sight. If all outcomes, beyond such a point, are acceptable, then one arm will do.
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like being bombed, would have the same effect on everybody, and that the difference between near misses
and remote misses would be the degree of trauma
they suffered. This was not the finding of McCurdys
study. It found that those who survived near misses
were indeed traumatized, but those who survived
remote misses were affected in an unexpected way.
They became hardened by the experience of surviving
the severe bombardments, and ever more determined
to persevere. And, as we know, Winston Churchills
government became all the more determined not to
give in, but to pursue unconditional surrender instead.
They will fall back on low-tech communications. National security and political organs now in existence in
such countries stretch to the grass roots. The final fall
back for populations in such disastrous straits are traditional social frameworks. Soon varied suppressed
contending forces (ethnic, religious, political, or other)
will spring into action with various change agendas.
If matters are left to the remaining forces and frameworks to resolve, some new order will evolve. But the
outcome is as likely to be as intolerable as the situation
that warranted offensive operations in the first place.
It would be as unwise to have caused it deliberately as
it would be to try to predict the outcome.
We have already mentioned how well Wardian
theory performed in the first battles of the Afghan and
Iraqi wars. But such thinking also fueled over-optimism about the course and outcome of those wars. It
also caused high-level leaders to believe in an ill-designed and puny second strategic armone that was
not able to impose an acceptable status quo within politically acceptable costs and time.
Distant blockading compounds this weakness by
setting in motion causal chains affecting globalized
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economic interdependencies in unpredictable, fratricidal, and even suicidal ways. For instance, China
is now Americas third largest export customer after
Canada and Mexico. How broad would be the economic ramifications of a distant blockade of China?
Are we confident they would harm China more than
the United States? How certain can we be in regarding the response of Chinese leadership? So not only
might unpredictable causal chains transform China
into something more intolerable than it was when war
started, but unpredictable causal chains will surely
shrink the global economy intolerably as well.
It is one thing to modify or disrupt man-made systems; it is quite another thing to modify or disrupt the
intentions of actual men. Because we can only ever
guess what strangers are thinking and what factors
matter to them, we cannot know with certainty whether air and naval attacks on high value targets will cause
submission, or how long it will take before decisions
to submit are taken, or what form these decisions will
take. Democracies may respond one way to damaged
infrastructure, while tyrants, who are as likely as not
to have let infrastructure crumble while constructing
palaces, may respond differently. All decisionmakers
are dealing with varied pressures, some unknown to
us, and these pressures arise from various directions
and constantly change in direction and amplitude. We
can predict with some confidence, however, that once
we attack a determined enemy, that enemys definition of winning will promptly become not losing, or
delaying defeat (indefinitely, if possible) until the
coalition tires of pursuing its original strategic ends.
Rather than trust in our predictive powers, we should
recall how powerless we were against Ho Chi Minhs
unification of Vietnam, and allow this memory to in-
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between a foreign occupier and a homegrown competitor. The key to regime change is not the knocking
down of the regime and its forces, but the successful
immediate pacification of the population despite the
power vacuum that follows regime change. And this
has to be achieved before the legitimacy, in the eyes of
the population, of a liberator becomes the illegitimacy
of an occupier.
Pacifying unruly ungoverned space is very difficult to do; there are no shortcuts. It takes keeping
people safe and getting them on the side of peace. It
is also very expensive in terms of trained and armed
manpower. Some studies, based on rare historical
successes, have judged the price to be no less than 20
security personnel per 1,000 citizens.6 This approach
also requires legitimate and efficient courts and prisons. It takes patience, time, evenhandedness, and consistency of word and deed. The benefit, however, is
that the state decides when normal is attained, and
warring factions as well as insurgents are eventually
integrated into a peaceful society.7
Second, the state can simultaneously war and police in the same area of operations. This is the far more
complex practice, and the one actually more common
today. Success at warring and policing requires keeping straight who it is you are fighting and with whom
you are enforcing the law of the landconfusing this
point incurs great penalties. The principle of policing violence is to suppress it (and resulting property
damage) to tolerable levels by creating and reinforcing the perception that perpetrators will face a high
probability of being caught and prosecuted, and that
there is no honor in this. Policing successfully requires
retaining the moral high ground, and strong and legitimate institutions of justicecourts, laws, and police.
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For policing to succeed, more and more of the population must see the insurgents violent acts as crime.
Going to war with an insurgent is admitting defeat in
that regard.
Warring successfully requires being able to defend
favorably a desired status quo on the one hand (by
causing the insurgents attacks upon it to fail), and on
the other, to cause a movement of committed warriors
of a sacred cause to submit to the rule of the sovereign states authority. Some argue that the one facilitates the other, but to work well in tandem, they must
both be perceived to succeed by the population and
by the insurgents. In practice, they sap strength from,
and undermine, one another when one or the other
is seen to fail. It is possible to switch from warring to
policing once a moral high ground and stronger legal institutions are established, but switching back to
the warring approach is an admission of weakness
and failure.
Weak states with weak institutions condemn
themselves to perpetual pacification by warring until
they win legitimacy with the people and the armed
struggle with their armed opposition. Aid by outsiders must be provided without delegitimizing the government in the eyes of the people. This is very difficult
to do.
Pacification and Modern Technology.
Volumes could be written about technique and experience, all worthy of attention, but this is the simple,
yet difficult to follow, logic of pacificationenforcing
peace in communities of people at war with each other
and their governments. Unlike deterrence, defense,
and attack, pacification is not altered significantly by
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experts that trickle, rather than flood, into the country. U.S. strategists need not prepare for a land war
in Asia, yet they cannot neglect pacification scenarios
like the ones described here. Pacification, like attack,
can succeed only on the basis of integrated operations
containing robust ground forces.
CONCLUSION: BEYOND AIR-SEA BATTLE
We should never again put ourselves into situations in which we are unprepared and powerless to do
what we intend with the forces we are willing to commit. We should have no delusions about the difficulty
of using war to bring about desired change in human
situations. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, the faultiness of over-simplified Wardian thinking was vividly
displayed. In both cases, an opening shock and awe
battle-winning strategy was not followed with a wellthought-through war-winning strategy. As a result,
we failed to enforce the peace on our terms. What is
worse, we have failed to learn why we failed.
The reason, in brief, is that we do not yet understand what military power is. Military power is not
raw destructive force. Military power, at bottom, is
the ability to influence human decisions and behavior; it entails the focused and constructive use of force
alongside other instruments of power. Indeed, it is a
matter of brain as much as brawn. Strategists must
understand both military power in generalhow maneuver, firepower, protection, and leadership translate combat potential into real effectsand military
power in its specific functionsdeter attack, defend
against attack when deterrence fails, attack in order
to impose and enforce a new and better peace where
an intolerable one exists, and pacify an intolerably
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PART II:
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CHAPTER 6
STRATEGY AND FORCE PLANNING
IN A TIME OF AUSTERITY
Michael J. Meese
An earlier version of this article was published as an Institute
for National Security Studies Strategic Forum paper. The views
expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Armed Forces Mutual
Aid Association or any government agency.
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In the extreme, austerity may cause political leaders to scramble to preserve constituent interests, military officers to fight to protect pet projects, decisionmakers to placate the demands of competing groups,
and no one to focus on the security needs of the nation.
Consequently, during a period of austerity, when it is
most important to maximize the effectiveness of each
defense dollar, billions can be diverted to goals that
may not provide the most effective contribution to
national security. Strategy and force planning under
austerity is different from normal budgeting and requires full understanding of the current U.S. budgetary and fiscal realities.
TODAYS AUSTERITY
The austerity in national security spending is a
function of a drawdown from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the need to reduce all parts of the budget to
address the federal fiscal crisis, and a concomitant reprioritization within national power to support a new,
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Sadly, the political environment today is characterized by extreme polarization, which significantly
limits the chances for coherent strategic choices to
enhance national security. Instead of compromise,
national leaders narrowly averted a debt ceiling crisis with the Budget Control Act of 2011, which prescribed sequestration. Sequestration was viewed as so
draconian and anti-strategic that it would force political leaders to compromise, but it failed to do so. As a
result, the nation faced a fiscal cliff in January 2013,
delayed sequestration until March 1, and then allowed
budget formulas instead of coherent policy to dictate
federal spending. The government shutdown and
difficulty extending the debt ceiling in October 2013
reflects the continuing political paralysis in Washington. The Murray-Ryan Bipartisan Budget Conference
Agreement in December 2013 forestalls an immediate
crisis in 2014, but does not provide substantial movement toward a comprehensive solution in the future.
Without a national consensus on the systemic budgetary challenges described earlier, cuts in defense
programs will have little impact on the national fiscal crisis. If cutting an Army or Marine division might
save $5 billion per year, such savings would merely
represent $5 billion in entitlement reform that would
not be done, tax revenues that would not be raised, or
domestic programs that would not be cut.
So, under these economic and political circumstances, what should be done with regard to force
planning in an era of austerity? First, defense leaders
need to engage in a credible dialogue about austerity
as part of grand strategy so that as defense is cut those
savings are actually used for deficit reductionthat is,
to improve the nations fiscal position and not for other
political priorities. Second, defense leaders should not
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ing austerityacross-the-board salami slice reductions of all parts of the defense budget.
In addition to identifying specific management reforms, overhead reductions, and proposed reductions
to military compensation, the SCMR identified, but
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did not decide between, two broad options going forward, each of which would represent a distinct strategic direction. Hagel outlined these two broad options
in this way:
Approach 1 concentrates on technology and acquisition and trades away size for high-end capability:
Army would be reduced from the 490,000 that
is planned for now to between 380,000 and
450,000 active duty Soldiers for the future force.
Navy would be reduced from 11 carriers to 8 or
9 carriers.
Marines would be reduced from 182,000 currently to between 150,000 and 175,000 active
Marines.
Continued modernization, especially against
anti-access and area-denial threats with longrange strike, submarine cruise missiles, joint
strike fighters, and special operations.
Approach 2 concentrates on force structure and
trades away high-end capability for size:
Army, Navy, and Marines would generally
retain projected sizes to sustain capability for
regional power projection and presence.
Modernization programs would be cancelled
or curtailed, with slower growth to cyber and
other programs.
Defense would, in effect, take a decade-long
modernization holiday.
While Hagel made no decision among these approaches, these kinds of strategic options effectively
illustrate substantial tradeoffs among defense priorities. Either approach would be substantially different
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In the QDR, DoD has forestalled making fundamental strategic choices and instead has declared to
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11. Chuck Hagel, as quoted in Statement on Strategic Choices and Management Review, July 31, 2013, available from www.
defense.gov/Speeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=1798.
12. Mark Gunzinger, Shaping Americas Future Military: Toward a New force Planning Construct, Washington, DC: Center
for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2013, p. ii.
13. Quadrennial Defense Review 2014, Washington, DC: Department of Defense, March 4, 2014, p. 53.
14. Calculations based on DoD Comptroller, Table 6-8.
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CHAPTER 7
STRATEGIC MEANS:
BUILDING AN ARMY FOR AN ERA
OF STRATEGIC UNCERTAINTY
Douglas Macgregor
Today, Americans are disinclined to support military interventions in conflicts where the United States
itself is not attacked, and American economic prosperity is not at risk.1 In 1975, it was No more Vietnams;
today, it is No more Iraqs!2 This attitude is reinforced
by both the current absence of an existential military
threat to the United States and the American publics
demand for jobs and economic growth instead of
military spending.3
Yet, it would be wrong to conclude that the publics attitude emanates from complacency about the
nations security or from some nave view of international politics.4 On the contrary, American public
support for a robust defense establishment remains
strong. The American experience in Iraq simply imparted the lesson that open-ended missions involving masses of U.S. ground troops designed to occupy
backward, hostile societies are unaffordable and strategically self-defeating.5 For the first time in decades,
the pressure on American political and military leaders to formulate strategic aims worth fighting and dying for before American blood and treasure are sacrificed is enormous and growing.
Regrettably, the growing demand for a new and
less belligerent foreign policy has yet to be matched
by coherent strategic guidance to the armed forces
from the President and the Secretary of Defense. The
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War is much like the market. War assesses the substantive strength and capability of the participants.
War rewards superior firepower, survivability, and
agility. War punishes vulnerabilities, fragility, and immobility.12 When Soviet and Imperial Japanese Army
(IJA) forces collided on the plains of Nomonhan in
1939,13 superior Japanese aircraft outranged and outfought the opposing Soviet air force to a draw,14 but
Japanese airpower could not compensate for the IJAs
weakness in mobility, armor, and firepower. The IJAs
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3. Combat groups enable the Army to shed unneeded equipment, rationalizing modernization within a joint rotational readiness system. The system also
preserves depth in the fighting force that is at risk of
further cuts;17
4. Within the proposed joint readiness system,
combat groups are also faster to deploy and cheaper
to maintain and modernize than the current divisioncentric structure;
5. Combat groups are high lethality, low density
formations, organized and equipped to mobilize fighting power disproportionate to their size. In short, they
punch above their weight and are scalable.
Today, the Armys leadership is once again trying
to re-equip the old, shrinking ground force by building
and inserting updated versions of old equipmentthe
ground combat vehicleinto old organizations. This
was the French armys approach to modernization
between 1920 and 1940. It is the road to ruin, not future victory. High risk development programs like the
Future Combat Systems (FCS) are unaffordable and
unlikely to result in funding. Rapid prototyping using
a proven platform is far more promising because it mitigates risk and speeds up delivery. Todays Army cannot risk binding Army modernization efforts through
massive programs intended to stamp out ideal designs
over 20-year production runs (FCS).
Rapid prototypings principle disadvantage lies in
smaller production runs and retooling costs, but this
disadvantage is offset by the closer interaction with
the user community. However, when tied to a new
force design, rapid prototyping is a better, more costeffective way to explore and develop new capabilities
quickly with smaller inventories of new equipment in
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strategic vision fails to produce this outcome, fiscal reality eventually will. The anticipated reduction in the
number of unified commands will simply accelerate
this process.
Building the integrated, joint C2 inside the regional
unified commands will take time, but the coming interwar period is the right time to experiment, test, and
evaluate the potential alternatives. The Army is ideally positioned to lead this process. As a first step, the
Army can stand up two Joint Force Land Component
Commands (JFLCC), one oriented to the East or the
Pacific and, the other oriented to the West or North
Africa and the Middle East. (See Figure 7-4.)
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fiscal. Joint operational concepts in the sense of integrating maneuver and strike on the operational and
tactical levels must be developed in ways that utilize
basic, learned principles, but are still flexible enough
to permit the maximum number of approaches to
unforeseen operational challenges. Contingency war
is warfare with unexpected parameters, waged with
insufficient time to prepare, and fought in a place
where the political and military leadership did not anticipate fighting. If the Army is to posit future conflict
scenarios successfully, and then to infer from them
the need for capabilities that may not yet exist inside
a force with an adaptive force design, a small body
of talented, professional officers is needed to study
the range of operational and strategic problems and
recommend solutions.
Eliminating the unneeded echelon of brigade command will offer the opportunity to promote younger
officers faster to flag rank. While this change would
constitute an improvement, by itself, it would not be
enough. For a new human capital strategy to have
any meaning, it must institutionalize a selection system that values talent more than longevity of Service
(C2I = Character, Competence, Intelligence). The officers selected to perform these tasks must be chosen
on the basis of demonstrated performance against objective standards: examinations for entry to the Staff
College, testing and evaluation at the training centers,
and assessments during deployments. Simply selecting those who have cultivated influence at the fourstar level by serving as aide-de-camps or marrying
the generals daughter is not the answer. Developing
officers with the courage and imagination to explore
new ways of doing things is too important to ignore.
Observations about the character and talents of a serv-
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13. Alvin Coox, Nomonhan: Japan Against Russia, 1939, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press: 1985, p. 84. Also known as
the Battle of Khalkha River, the battle took place between the cities of Nuren Obo and Nomonhan. The total area spanned no more
than 100 kilometers wide and at a depth of a little less than 30
kilometers at the widest. In this small area would be the largest
and most costly defeat for the Kwantung Army by the Soviets
until August 1945. Japan was simply outmatched with about half
the troops, almost a fifth of the aircraft, and a tenth of the tanks
that the Soviets had.
14. Dimitar Nedialkov, In the Skies of Nomonhan: Japan versus
Russia May-September 1939, Manchester, United Kingdom (UK):
Crecy Publishing Limited, 2011, pp. 140-141.
15. Stephen Large, Emperor Hirohito and Showa Japan: A Political Biography, New York: Routledge, 1992, p. 132.
16. General Norton A. Schwartz, USAF, and Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert, USN, Air-Sea BattlePromoting Stability
in an Era of Uncertainty, The-American-Interest.com, February
20, 2012.
17. According to retired Army Major General Robert Scales,
Affordable readiness can best be achieved by adopting some
form of rotational deployment scheme for the entire U.S. Army
both at home and overseas. Robert H. Scales, Jr., USA, Yellow
Smoke: The Future of Land Warfare for Americas Military, Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003.
18. John Matsumura et al., Lightning over Water, Sharpening
Americas Light Forces for Rapid Reaction Missions, Santa Monica,
CA: RAND National Defense Research Institute, 2000, p. 103.
19. Cross-domain synergy: The complementary vice merely
additive employment of capabilities in different domains such
that each enhances the effectiveness and compensates for the
vulnerabilities of the others . . . Joint Operational Access Concept
(JOAC), Version 1.0, January 17, 2012.
20. General (Ret.) Pete Chiarelli, Beyond GoldwaterNichols, Joint Forces Quarterly, Autumn 1993, p. 71.
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CHAPTER 8
REBALANCING LAND FORCES IN THE
UNITED KINGDOM AND AUSTRALIA
Matthew Cavanaugh
On July 4, 1918, four infantry companies from
the American 33rd Division fought alongside the 4th
Australian Division at the Battle of Hamel.1 American
Corporal Thomas A. Pope earned the Medal of Honor
while serving under the higher command of Australian Corps Commander Lieutenant-General Sir John
Monash, who in turn was commanded in the British
sector by General Sir Douglas Haig.2 As this episode
suggests, American, British, and Australian soldiers
have a deep tradition of shared sacrifice.
Nearly a century later, austerity accurately describes the zeitgeist in Washington, DC, London,
United Kingdom (UK), and Canberra, Australia.
The British Army is reducing from an active force of
102,000 to 82,000.3 An Australian foreign policy think
tank director recently wrote, Australias military
spending has slipped to 1.6 percent of gross domestic
product . . . this is the lowest it has been since before
World War II.4 In the United States, a recent Reuters
story highlighted the reduction of 10 brigade combat
teams and cuts which total 80,000 soldiers over the
next 4 years.5 Moreover, as U.S. Army Chief of Staff
General Raymond Odierno recently acknowledged in
Foreign Affairs, the organization is adjusting to major
changes like declining budgets, due to the countrys
worsened fiscal situation.6 All three governments
face resource constraints.
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cies assessed with high confidence that the Syrian government used a nerve agent in the Damascus
suburbs.20
Despite British Prime Minister David Camerons
support for military involvement, his parliament voted 285-272 against any type of military intervention.21
Columnist Roger Cohen opined that this marks a watershed moment that leaves the special relationship
in search of meaning.22 Cohen found Ed Milliband,
the opposition Labour Party leader, counseling that
the lesson for Britain is it must sometimes strike out
on its own, even if that means separately from America.23 Oxford University historian Hew Strachan has
recently recorded similar thoughts.24
There appears to be a divergence afoot in Australia as well. Michael Fullilove rightly notes that, Australia is the only country to have fought beside the
United States in all of its major conflicts over the past
century, including Vietnam and Iraq.25 Past may not
be prologue, however: a poll from the Lowy Institute
found that only 38 percent of Australians would support American military action in Asia . . . in a conflict
between China and Japan.26 So, Australian attitudes
might be changing about the use of force in ways that
are not favorable to the United States.
Australia is serving a 2-year term on the United
Nations Security Council, making it a part of the response to the Syrian conflict.27 Also, the 2013 Australian parliamentary election shifted power from the
Labor Party and (outgoing) Prime Minister Kevin
Rudd to a Liberal-National coalition led by (incoming) Prime Minister Tony Abbott.28 Immediately after
the election, the press speculated about a policy shift,
with some noting that Abbott has been far less vocal than Mr. Rudd in his support for an American-led
strike against the Syrian government.29
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In sum, both with respect to the British and Australian armies, one should assume that co-production
and joint-venture endeavors would be subject to the
vagaries of shifting political winds, thereby rendering
such collaboration difficult at best.
ENABLE THE HUMAN NETWORK30
Bearing this in mind, what partnered policy
might fit this ever-changing reality? General Stanley
McChrystal once wrote about the importance of understanding the enemy network.31 U.S. policymakers
would also do well to understand the friendly network. The human network is there when needed, but
can be unplugged when politically necessary. Armies
often simplify their common tasks to a three-word
slogan: ShootMoveCommunicate. All three
are underpinned by morale and trust.32 Though each
country may use different weapons to shoot and
separate vehicles to move, the ability to communicate in a common language can make each force
compatible without commitment. This is a desirable
collaborative way in an environment marked by reduced means and brimming with questions about
policy ends.
There are a number of policies that would promote
this sort of communication:
1. International Staff Integration: Americans, British, and Australian officers have served together intimately for the past decade in war. To maintain these
relationships, international assignment service should
continue in peacetime. Australian Major General Richard Burr currently serves as the Deputy Commanding
General for Operations at U.S. Army Pacific, for instance.33 This sort of staff integration can be expanded.
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CONCLUSION
The challenge, as Steven Jermy of the British Royal
Navy has written, is that Strategy making is problem
solving of the most complex order, because it deals
with three of lifes great imponderables: people, war,
and the future.40 Supporting the human network is
simply better policy than co-production and jointventure because it is there when needed, yet can be
rapidly disconnected when politically expedient. In
an environment of significantly reduced means
and loaded with questions about policy ends, this
is a feasible, collaborative way that empowers the
American, British, and Australian ground forces to be
greater than the sum of their parts.
ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 8
1. Gary Sheffield, The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army,
London, UK: Aurum Press, 2011, p. 293.
2. Ibid., p. 294. See also Pope, Thomas A., Washington, DC:
Center of Military History, available from www.history.army.mil/
html/moh/worldwari.html#POPE.
3. Andrew Chuter, Reductions Will Limit Armed Forces
Capabilities, UK Military Chief Warns, Defense News, August
22, 2013, available from www.defensenews.com/article/20130822/
DEFREG01/308220013/Reductions-Will-Limit-Armed-ForcesCapabilities-UK-Military-Chief-Warns.
4. Michael Fullilove, Caught Between the U.S. and China,
The New York Times, September 5, 2013.
5. David Alexander, Army To Eliminate 10 Brigades at U.S.
Bases in Drawdown: Odierno, Reuters, June 25, 2013, available from www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/25/us-usa-army-idUSBRE95O1IR20130625.
184
6. Raymond T. Odierno, The U.S. Army in a Time of Transition: Building a Flexible Force, Foreign Affairs, May-June,
2012, p. 11.
7. See Arthur F. Lykke, Toward an Understanding of Military Strategy, The U.S. Army War College Guide to Strategy, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2001,
pp. 179-185.
8. Note: Both co-production and joint-venture should
generally be considered multinational shared investment in, and
the development of, new military technologies for those participating nations.
9. See Robert D. Kaplan, Americas Elegant Decline, The
Atlantic Monthly, November 2007.
10. Robert Gates, quoted in Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. James T. Conway, Gary Roughead, and Thad W. Allen, A
Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Sea power, Washington, DC:
Department of the Navy, United States Marine Corps, and United
States Coast Guard, October 2007, p. 1.
13. Ibid., p. 5.
14. See Combined Maritime Forces, Wikipedia, available
from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Maritime_Forces#Combined_
Maritime_Forces.
15. The Economist: Pocket World in Figures, 2013 Ed., London,
UK: Profile Books, 2013, p. 102.
16. Paul Kennedy, Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers
Who Turned the Tide in the Second World War, New York: Random
House, 2013, p. 121.
17. Ibid., p. 122.
185
18. Benoit Gomis and Andrea Barbara Baumann, U.K.France Defense Cooperation in Spotlight Ahead of NATO Summit, World Politics Review, March 21, 2012.
19. United Nations Human Rights Committee, Number of
Syrian refugees tops 2 million mark with more on the way, September 3, 2013, available from www.unhcr.org/522495669.html.
20. Office of the Press Secretary, Government Assessment of
the Syrian Governments Use of Chemical Weapons on August
21, 2013, Washington, DC: The White House, August 30, 2013,
available from www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/30/
government-assessment-syrian-government-s-use-chemical-weaponsaugust-21.
21. Roger Cohen A Much Less Special Relationship, The
New York Times, August 30, 2013.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Hew Strachan, British National Strategy: Who Does It?
Parameters, Vol. 43, No. 2, Summer 2013, p. 51.
25. Fullilove.
26. Ibid. See also The Lowy Institute Poll 2013, Sydney,
Australia: Lowy Institute, June 24, 2013, available from www.
lowyinstitute.org/publications/lowy-institute-poll-2013.
27. United Nations Security Council, United Nations Website, available from www.un.org/en/sc/members/.
28. Matt Siegel, Australian Labor Party Is Dealt Sharp Blow
in Vote, Ending 6 Years in Power, The New York Times, September 8, 2013.
29. Ibid.
30. Note: Human network refers to person-to-person linkages in any meaningful professional form (i.e., voice, electron-
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CHAPTER 9
MAINTAINING AND MODERNIZING
THE FORCE
IN PERIODS OF REDUCED RESOURCES
Conrad Crane
The U.S. Army once again faces the challenge of
maintaining and modernizing the force. American resources devoted to defense decline after every major
conflict. During these recoils from wars, threats are
usually poorly or narrowly defined, domestic economic concerns and a desire to return to normalcy
overshadow foreign policy, and the Army struggles
to define its missions as policymakers decide to rely
more on other services. Army Chiefs of Staff generally
find themselves with much flexibility and little direction in determining cuts and priorities, while facing
a widening gulf between strategic commitments and
resources. Far-sighted leaders have met this enduring challenge by maintaining trained and educated
Soldiers who could rise to their responsibilities when
danger again threatened, by concentrating on a few
key and relatively inexpensive weapons systems when
money was scarce, and by laying the groundwork for
more extensive acquisitions when policies changed
and conflicts erupted.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The service has responded to this challenge in
many different ways. By and large, the Army has not
had the opportunity to undertake major modernization programs. Instead, it has moved incrementally
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while preparing to take advantage of rare opportunities for more abundant funding: a long war with a
buildup, or a national security policy reemphasizing
land forces.
The United States did not concern itself with
building and sustaining the military forces of a world
power until the 20th century. Before then, the peacetime Regular Army was always very small, with the
expectation that militia and volunteers could be called
up for emergencies. While the Navy worried about
keeping up with the latest technology, the Army did
not. This all changed after World War I. The primary
security threat to the United States was perceived as a
rising Japan, with a resulting focus on the Pacific and
the Navy (the first American strategic pivot to that
region), but the solution to such danger was thought
to lie mainly in naval arms limitations treaties. Meanwhile, the National Defense Act of 1920 did establish
a base active force of 280,000 Soldiers to defend the
homeland and perform expeditionary duties. The legislation was heavily influenced by the Guard lobby in
Congress, and depended on the Guard and an Organized Reserve to help mobilize almost 2 million draftees in 60 days for a war. The Army also made some effort to incorporate promising new technologies from
World War I such as the tank and airplane, but internal opposition to those weapons systems, the absence
of imminent threats, and the reluctance of the executive and legislative branches to provide much funding
limited the options of the Roaring Twenties. Indeed,
in some circles, the solution to the threat of war was
just to sign a treaty outlawing it.1
The Great Depression of 1929 made matters worse.
As budgets got even tighter and the depression deepened, the Army Air Corps nevertheless proved adept
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investment in air mobility. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamaras emphasis on systems analysis helped
motivate the Army to set up a new Combat Developments Command in 1962, which brought into use the
AR-15 rifle along with the new helicopters.9 These
would soon be tested in Southeast Asia. The Korean
War had globalized the national security strategy of
containment beyond Europe, and now Communism
had to be stopped in Vietnam. But counterinsurgency
against light and guerrilla forces does not provide
much justification for force modernization. In the
aftermath of war in Southeast Asia, the Army again
suffered severely, ending up with the Hollow Force
of the late-1970s. Army leaders realized that the force
needed to modernize, especially after the 1973 ArabIsraeli War, but defense budgets were again shrinking. One of the main reasons for the shift of combat
support and combat service support assets to the
RC by Creighton Abrams was to free up funding for
long-delayed modernization of active combat units.
However, by 1979, six of 10 continental U.S.-based divisions were rated not combat ready, as was one of
four in Europe. The U.S. Army in Europe commander
complained that his force had become obsolescent.
Even for a substantially smaller force, budgets were
inadequate to achieve production rates to replace aging equipment with new models which were ready to
field, such as the Abrams tank and Apache helicopter.
The Congressional Budget Offices explanation for
that state echoes eerily today:
Yet the underlying problem may have been an imbalance between defense resources and national security
commitments that made it impossible for DoD [the
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CHAPTER 10
THE ARMY IN TIMES OF AUSTERITY
Michael J. Meese
Winston Churchill famously said, Gentlemen,
we have run out of money. Now we have to think.1
Although neither the Department of Defense (DoD)
nor the Army have run out of money, in the current
period of austerity, coherent strategic thinking will be
essential. The Army has a compelling strategy that can
resonate with the American public and decisionmakers, but Army leaders must both understand and effectively articulate the Armys role in the context of
American grand strategy to effectively make the case
for Landpower.
To explain the role of the Army in times of austerity, this chapter will review the Armys history confronting budget stringency over the past century. In
doing so, it will identify the four fundamental tendencies that have dominated the Armys approach during past periods of stringency and explain how they
are affecting the Army today. Finally, with this perspective, the chapter provides a specific proposal that
could help the Army emphasize its appropriate role in
U.S. grand strategy and improve its ability to contribute to national security.
THE ARMYS HISTORY DURING STRINGENCY
The Army has undergone several periods of austerity throughout the past century; indeed, they have occurred regularly every 20 yearsduring the interwar
1930s, the post-Korea 1950s, the post-Vietnam 1970s,
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and the post-Cold War 1990s. A comprehensive examination of each of those periods of downsizing reflects
significant continuities, even though the international
situation, domestic politics, and budgetary stringency
were different in each case.2 This is not surprising, both
because of the relatively stable institutional culture
within the Army and the fact that, in almost all cases,
the generals who were making decisions for the Army
during one period of stringency were field grade officers during the previous stringency (20 years earlier)
and were commissioned during or soon after the stringency prior to that (40 years earlier).3 The Army itself
is a prisoner of its own experiences, and it is important
to understand those experiences if Army leaders are
to make effective policy.
In examining previous periods of austerity, it appears that the Army has a deeply ingrained approach
to peacetime decisionmaking, which I call the peacetime Army Concept. The peacetime Army Concept
consists of four tenets, which have a subtle, but profound, impact on the Army and the Armys effectiveness.4 The first is the Armys consistent emphasis on
people, with the tendency to trade all other factors
equipment, readiness, sustainability, and othersto
preserve the emphasis on Soldiers and officers already
in the Army. The second is the Armys emphasis on
expansibility, so that Army leaders will generally
maintain large organizational structures that can be
filled quickly in the event of rapid expansion rather
than cut down those structures. The third is the emphasis on equitable allocation of resources among
all major commands and branches, with less of a tendency to redistribute power or radically reorganize
the Army to meet new conditions. The fourth tenet
is that the Army will adopt inappropriate strategy
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the human faces behind the budget numbers. However, it is important to recognize that, while personnel
quality is priceless, personnel quantity can be very
expensive. Because the Army is the most personnelintensive force, the increasing military compensation
over the past decade has most significantly affected
the Army. Military pay has become a huge, mandatory expenditure within the Army budget that significantly constrains flexibility, as noted in Figure 10-1.
Civilian pay is a large part of Operations and Maintenance spending and is also difficult to control. In
other words, once the end strength of the Army is set,
personnel numbers will drive the budget spending.
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ods of stringency, the Army invested in leader development programs, whether it was at the U.S. Military
Academy, the U.S. Army War College, the Noncommissioned Officer Academy, or other programs. Those
relatively modest expenditures retained the leaders
who were interested in expanding their education,
and in each future conflict those investments in leader
development paid huge dividends.6
Second, as the most personnel-intensive service,
the Army should champion effective compensation
reform to reduce overall personnel costs. For example, the recently published 10-15-55 plan offers an
alternative retirement system that would result in
significant savings (a projected $3.84 billion per year)
and could actually enhance the quality of personnel
in the Army.7 Programs such as this should not just
be reluctantly forced upon the Army, but should be
championed by the Army as a way to reduce costs and
enhance personnel quality.
Third, in previous periods of stringency, the Army
had great difficulty whenever there was significant
uncertainty regarding future personnel cuts. Until
and unless Army leaders can establish the long range
end strength of the Army, the annual budget cycle
can become paralyzed by just fighting for a personnel
number. However, the Army has solved this problem
in the past. Most famously, Chief of Staff of the Army
Creighton Abrams had an explicit agreement with
Secretary of Defense James Schlesingerwhich became known as the golden handshakethat fixed
the Armys declining personnel strength and permitted the Army to restructure within that new, lower
fixed number (of 785,000 Soldiers).8 While difficult
to achieve, gaining a definitive decision on the quantity of Soldiers after the drawdown would permit the
Army to focus on the quality of those that remain.
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Expansible Units.
In previous periods of austerity, the Army frequently emphasized the need to maintain relatively
larger units, even if they lacked Soldiers to fill those
units. Historically, larger units provided the superstructure into which newly recruited Soldiers could
be mobilizedas they were during World WarII.
Organizationally, larger units provided greater senior leadership responsibility and more headquarters
for operations, planning, and training of leaders and
staffs. After Vietnam, Abrams had a choice between 11
robust divisions or 16 expansible divisions. He deliberately chose to retain more units that were explicitly
designed to be hollow, supported by round out
units mobilized from the National Guard to bring
them to full strength.9 In the late-1990s, when the
Army had to reduce its forces from 495,000 to 480,000,
a relatively small reduction, it took Soldiers from existing units without reducing the overall structure
of the Army. This led to a degradation of readiness
within many of the Armys units, which was criticized
by many observers at the time as a step back toward a
hollow Army.10 Finally, there is a great propensity to
maintain larger structures with more headquarters in
more locations, because divisions, brigades, and other
elements of force structure are extremely difficult to
justify and recreate after it is cut.
Today, the Army may have broken with this precedent, at least within Active Duty forces. It appears
to be choosing relatively fewer, but more robustly
manned units. For example, the Army recently decided to reduce the number of brigade combat teams
(BCTs) from 43 to 32. Concurrently, the Army will
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DOCTRINEADOPTING NATIONAL
STRATEGY AS ARMY STRATEGY
During peacetime austerity, the Army frequently
confuses its service doctrine with national strategy.
In each of the four major cases of downsizing in the
last century, the Army adopted a scaled-down version of the existing national strategy as doctrine. In
the 1930s, as national strategy emphasized pacifism,
disarmament, and a defensive military, the Army followed suit and did not develop a doctrine of offensive, combined arms warfare until the outset of World
War II. In the 1950s, as national strategy emphasized
massive retaliation with nuclear weapons, the Army
developed the Pentomic Army without any doctrine for fighting on a non-nuclear battlefield, thus
requiring rapid changes in Vietnam. In the 1970s, as
national strategy emphasized dtente, the Army followed with a defensive doctrine, called Active Defense. Active Defense primarily emphasized only
deterrence instead of the offensive steps that would
be taken when deterrence fails, and the Army had to
respond rapidly in 1983 with AirLand Battle. In the
1990s, as the nation became fascinated with the postOperation DESERT STORM Revolution in Military
Affairs, the Army invested in Force 21 high technology, and then had to scramble to fight protracted
counterinsurgencies against low-technology enemies
in Iraq and Afghanistan. Army doctrine needs to be
consistent with national strategy, but that does not
imply that it must be the same as national strategy.
When the Army has followed national strategy too
closely, it has led to significant, rapid changes at the
outset of the next war.
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210
Total
46 BCT-months
24 BCT-months
18 BCT-months
20 BCT-months
12 BCT-months
12 BCT-months
132 BCT-months
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213
2. For a comprehensive examination of the Army during periods of austerity, see Michael Meese, Defense Decision
Making Under Budget Stringency: Explaining Downsizing in
the United States Army, Ph. D. Diss: Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University, 2000.
3. For example, the Army leaders who are executing the decisions today were commissioned in the midst of the post-Vietnam
austerity and remember what then Chief of Staff of the Army Edward Shy Meyer described to Congress as a hollow Army in
1979. When those same leaders were majors, they were all offered
(and declined) a voluntary separation incentive as the Army
was paying people to leave in the 1990s. These common experiences undoubtedly influence their reactions to the current period
of stringency.
4. The Army Concept is a phrase borrowed from Andrew
Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986, pp. 6-7. He brilliantly used it to describe the wartime Army Concept, which focused on a large,
conventional land war which relied heavily on firepower and
failed to prepare it adequately for the counterinsurgency warfare
of Vietnam.
5. The only forced separations in the post-Cold War drawdown were 277 officers who were commissioned in 1979 and were
separated as a reduction-in-force board in 1992. See David H. McCormick, The Downsized Warrior: Americas Army in Transition,
New York: New York University Press, 1998, p. 114.
6. The description of leader development during each period
of downsizing is described in Meese. For specific details, see also
Mark C. Bender, Watershed at Leavenworth: Dwight D. Eisenhower
and the Command and General Staff School, Fort Leavenworth, KS:
Command and General Staff College, 1990; William W. Whitson,
The Role of the United States Army War College in the Preparation of Officers for National Security Policy Formulation, Ph.D.
Diss., Medford, MA: Tufts University, Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy, May 1, 1958; and Leadership for the 1970s, Carlisle, PA:
U.S. Army War College, October 20, 1971.
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215
Sprinted in Circles, Maritime Security, September 18, 2013, available from maritimesecurity.asia/free-2/maritime-security-asia/fy2013the-year-the-navy-sprinted-in-circles/.
15. See Casey Wardynski, David S. Lyle, and Michael J. Colarusso, Toward a U.S. Army Officer Corps Strategy for Success: A
Proposed Human Capital Model Focused upon Talent, Carlisle, PA:
Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, April 2009.
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CHAPTER 11
TRANSLATING STRATEGIC ENDS
INTO MEANS
Kerry J. Schindler
How large should be the Army or any of the Services? Given the potential costs of Army forces in the
future, this is literally the trillion dollar question. In
the past, this question was answered with another
question, to do what? It is in attempting to answer
this second question that national strategy is formed.
So what do you do when the answer to that question,
your strategy, exceeds what you can afford? Some
would argue that either your strategy must be adjusted or your budget must increase, but neither option is
always possible. A third option exists: optimize your
force structure to be more versatile, and thus try to
do more with what you have, while articulating the
risk to the decisionmakers. News headlines tend to
focus on the important issue of end strength, but the
mix of capabilities occupying the ranks of the Service
end strength is an equally important issue. The Army
is a tool of national policy; end strength determines
the size of the tool while shaping the force determines
what kind of tool the Army will be. Decisions regarding the Armys capabilities have far reaching effects
because if what the world or problem planners anticipate proves an illusion, then future decisionmakers
are left to rely on the flexibility of chosen capabilities.
Can the nations tools adapt to the problem, not try
to force the problem to adapt to them? As an Army
Force Manager, focusing on determining the best mix
of Army capabilities to meet the strategy is how we
spend our days.
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222
223
224
question for TAA will no longer only be where to assume risk, but what can the Army still do; essentially,
what strategy can we afford?
The Army has always struggled with the proper
balance between end-strength, readiness, and modernization. Over the past 12 years, this balance was
easy to achieve with the additional appropriations of
Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funding to
the TOA. But with the elimination of OCO and the
TOA reductions, the Army is entering into uncharted
challenges. As shown in Figure 11-2, the TOA line is
fixed (and declining). If you over-invest in personnel, readiness and/or modernization will suffer. The
Army would have untrained personnel lacking adequate equipment to meet the challenges of an everchanging enemy. If you continue with modernization
and/or readiness, you may not have the number of
forces required.
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226
Training.
The Army could choose to change the length of
schools (officer, warrant, noncommissioned, even basic and advanced individual training) by either removing instruction and/or by requiring the Soldiers new
units to provide the deleted instruction to the Soldier
or the individual Soldier to make up the missed curriculum through correspondence. Reduce the number
of seats at certain schools and require some Soldiers
to complete via correspondents courses. Additionally,
the Army may need to reduce the number of units
funded to train beyond the squad or platoon level.
Equipping.
The Army could rely more on pre-positioned
equipment sets (forward deployed equipment the
units would use to fight) and reduce the equipment
in units to the minimum level required to train; forgo
modernization or cancel procurement programs; and
divest specialized equipment in favor of more general
purpose equipment. These are all ways for the Army
to minimize equipping costs.
At present, Congress is still debating the 2014 budget and the OSD has begun QDR 2014 to address what
the defense strategy will become. The Army continues to explore all options for building a force capable of fighting and winning the nations wars. TAA
will find the best mix of forces within the given endstrength and strategy while minimizing the impact to
our Soldier, their families, and all those communities
that have provided our Army with such great support. We Army Force Managers are truly living in
interesting times.
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ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 11
1. ISCs were built to represent multiple military operations
or demand signals of various size, complexity, and duration
integrated into a time-phased response over a 7-to-13-year time
period. See 2010 QDR Report, Washington, DC: U.S. Department
of Defense, pp. 42-43.
(ISC-A): A major stabilization operation, deterring and defeating a highly capable regional aggressor, and extending support to civil authorities in response to a catastrophic event in the
United States. This scenario combination particularly stressed the
forces ability to defeat a sophisticated adversary and support domestic response.
(ISC-B): Deterring and defeating two regional aggressors
while maintaining a heightened alert posture for U.S. forces in
and around the United States. This scenario combination particularly stressed the forces combined arms capacity.
(ISC-C): A major stabilization operation, a long-duration deterrence operation in a separate theater, a medium-sized counterinsurgency mission, and extended support to U.S. civil authorities. This scenario combination particularly stressed elements of
the force most heavily tasked for counterinsurgency, stability,
and counterterrorism operations.
2. Defeat and Deter. See Defense Planning Guidance, Washington, DC: Department of Defense, April 11, 2012. U.S. forces
will remain capable of deterring and defeating aggression by any
potential adversary. As a nation with important interests in multiple regions, our forces must be capable of deterring and defeating aggression in one region even when our forces are committed
to a large-scale operation elsewhere. Deterrence is described in
(Joint Publication 3.0, Joint Operations, Washington, DC: Department of Defense, March 22, 2010.) The prevention of action by the
existence of a credible threat of unacceptable counteraction and/
or belief that the cost of action outweighs the perceived benefits.
3. The 11 DPG Primary Mission Areas are Counter Terrorism (CT) and Irregular Warfare (IW); Deter and Defeat Aggression; Project Power Despite Anti-Access/Area Denial Challenges;
Counter Weapons of Mass Destruction; Operate Effectively in
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CHAPTER 12
NEW CHALLENGES FOR THE U.S. ARMY
David W. Barno
Nora Bensahel
The U.S. Army, like the nation as a whole, is facing difficult new strategic challenges. Thirteen years
of constant warfare will end in 2014, when the last
U.S. combat troops leave Afghanistanthe longest
war in U.S. history. At the same time, the battles in
Washington continue about the future role and size of
the Army. Substantial cuts to the defense budget will
reduce Army end strength below 490,000 active-duty
troopsdown to 450,000, 420,000, or even as low as
380,000 under one severe scenario.1
Yet these challenges are not unprecedented. Cycles
of drawdown and rebuilding have occurred repeatedly in the pastoften with similar and even deeper
funding cuts than the U.S. military faces today2and
the Army has adapted in response. In the 1930s, for
example, the United States retrenched from the world
after the carnage of World War I, and military budgets shrank substantially. With Army end strength
slashed precipitously from wartime highs, the service
responded by investing in education and leader development, rebuilding its intellectual capability for
warfare when budgets were tight. That investment
paid off in growing a generation of officers who went
on to win World War II. In the 1950s, the Army faced
serious questions about the continuing relevance of
ground combat in the nuclear era, while seeing substantial defense resources shift to the rapid growth of
U.S. strategic airpower and the beginnings of space
231
competition. Echoes from both of these gloomy periods can be heard today in arguments about roles and
missions, budget share, and the future of land warfare.
Today, the Army once again faces similar problems
of constrained resources and questions of relevance,
especially given the rapid technological innovations
that enable increasing standoff and unmanned capabilities. Yet the United States will continue to need
ready and capable ground forces that can address
unexpected threats, and fight and win wars that cannot be resolved simply through applying standoff
weaponry, but require ground and populations to be
controlled. In order to ensure that it can respond to
the full range of challenges with capabilities that the
nation may demand in this fast-changing, resourceconstrained future, the Army will need to address six
key challenges: 1) redefining land warfare; 2) leveraging technology for the close fight; 3) reshaping the
roles of the active and reserve components; 4) making
expansibility work; 5) attracting and retaining talent;
and 6) addressing the paradox of coming home.
REDEFINING LAND WARFARE
Since at least the end of World War II, the U.S. military has embraced a deeply-held value of maintaining technological dominance over current or potential
adversariesan unwavering commitment to develop
and employ advanced weaponry whenever possible
instead of sacrificing the lives of men and women.
This has been seen most clearly in the continuing U.S.
commitment to air and space superiority, which has
not been seriously challenged in the last 5 decades.
Such a profound national commitment to military
technological dominance in conflict can best be de-
232
scribed as the American Way of War.3 It continues today, yet remains a philosophy in which the Army fits
only uncomfortably due to its close combat battlefield
responsibilities.
Over the last 40 years, the Armys major conceptual contribution to warfare was known as Air-Land
Battle. The development of this innovative concept
and its diverse web of supporting doctrine, materiel,
education, and organizations were prime examples of
the Armys renaissance after Vietnam. Conceived in
the 1980s as a means of defending Western Europe in
the face of overwhelming Soviet conventional forces,
Air-Land Battle provided a unifying concept of fighting that animated the Armys entire system of conventional warfare from the last stages of the Cold War
through the beginning of this century.4 Air-Land Battle
was designed to attack the forces of the Warsaw Pact
simultaneously in depth across all of its serial attacking echelons. It achieved this through unprecedented
integration of air and ground strike capabilities ranging from the front lines of combat all the way to the
enemys deepest reserves.
Driven by this Air-Land Battle doctrine, the Army
spent 40 years shaping its weaponry, force structure,
training, leader development, and even its personnel system largely around the continental defense of
Western Europe. The logic of this approach during the
Cold War was unassailable given the massed armies
of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact aimed like a
dagger at the heart of Europe, presenting an existential threat to the West. But with the fall of the Soviet
Union and shifts in global power toward the Pacific
Rim, that era has endedand no subsequent concept
of land warfare has emerged in the 21st century to
take the place of Air-Land Battle.
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234
LEVERAGING TECHNOLOGY
FOR THE CLOSE FIGHT
The Army, and land forces writ large, face the
unique demands associated with closing with the enemy and killing or capturing him in face-to-face proximity. This last 100 yards has always been the most
deadly domain of warfare, and remains today the
portion of the battlefield least influenced by modern
technology. Even in the first two major U.S. wars of
the 21st century, the technology available to aid and
protect Soldiers and Marines in close-in fighting was
largely limited to improved body armor, robots for
detecting and disarming roadside bombs, and mineresistant vehicles.
The Army must aggressively push for better technological solutions to its squad-level problems of both
protection and mobility. Infantry squads today on average carry far more weight on their backs than their
counterparts from World War II; they have gained the
least from the revolutions in information and material technologies that have transformed so many other
warfighting functions. Robotics for load-carrying and
more hazardous tasks associated with infantry combat offer promise, but the technology base has not
faced demands to deliver truly innovative solutions.
Ten years into our recent wars, both Army and Marine
infantrymen were often maimed and killed by simple
land mines that were discovered by stepping on the
device. This threat has been present for more than 100
years on the infantry battlefield, yet Soldiers today
have little to counter primitive explosive land mines
beyond what their great-grandfathers employed on
D-Day in 1944. This should be simply unacceptable.
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237
238
239
240
241
242
243
diversity found on the coasts or in sprawling metropolitan areas where Americans increasingly reside.
As a potentially (much) smaller Army is distributed
across even fewer bases, the risk grows that the culture of the Army will become increasingly separate
fromand less tolerant ofthe diverse culture of
most Americans, especially those living in growing
urban centers. This would be profoundly unhealthy
both for the Army and for the nation more broadly.
The Army (like the other services) will need to find
ways to counter this trend. One option would be to
increase outreach activities, such as speaking tours by
young officers and veteran sergeants to urban areas
and elites in the media, Hollywood, business, and
academia. Another would be to significantly increase
the opportunities for more members of these same
key communities to visit Army bases and see troops
and training. Finally, any future efforts to realign and
close excess Army bases should carefully consider not
only the potential budgetary savings, but the need to
maintain an Army presence across as broad a swath
of the U.S. population as possiblenot just in rural
low-cost areas, or on a small number of Mega-bases. Americans deserve to better know the heart and
soul of the military that their tax dollars support, and
whose members are sworn to protect them. A drift
into isolation between the two in coming years risks
losing the support of the American people, as well as
creating an Army that does not share the same values
and outlook as the society that it defends.
CONCLUSION
The U.S. Army is at a key crossroads, coming out
of two wars and entering into a period of strategic
uncertainty. It will get smaller, perhaps substantially
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248
PART III:
FUTURE MISSIONS
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CHAPTER 13
SHAPING STRATEGIES:
GEOPOLITICS AND THE U.S. ARMY
Richard Rosecrance
In the long term, the nations which control the
most productive territories will have an edge in charting the future direction of the world. Globalization,
economies of scale, and network primacy all have a
territorial dimension. Together, they govern economic
power which will ultimately determine political and
military outcomes. This is why U.S. military bases
in Europe are criticalthey help to provide stability
and political predictability in the most important economic areas of the world.
Economic power includes population, wealth, industrial skills, natural resources, and the capacity to
use them effectively. These factors of economic power
are clustered regionally in certain places. Insofar as
the definitive capacity of Landpower is the control of
territory, Landpower plays a vital role in the international distribution of economicand with it, politicalpower. The presence of U.S. land bases in Europe
and Asia help maintain the worlds present prosperity
and expanding Western power in the future. U.S. national interests are best served by using its Landpower
prudently and proactively to shape power relations in
Europe and Asia.
EUROPE, ASIA, AND EURASIA
Historically, the maintenance of power is partially the result of a competitive spirit and effective
engagement with foreign countries. Interwoven with
251
waterways and internal and external seas, Europe traditionally has provided the arena for an historical competition among its adjacent states. But mountain barriers and great rivers have made universal conquest a
difficult option for any aspiring hegemon. Even small
water-protected countries have usually been able
to maintain their existence. Thus both defense and
offense have been honed in the European context.
Over time, the economic development of European countries and their overseas offshoots has lent
industrial primacy to these nations. Writing in 1904,
Halford Mackinder claimed the world island (that
is, Eurasia from the British Isles to the Kamchatka
peninsula) would eventually come to control the
world. It possessed huge resources, giant populations,
and a dominant land mass. It was the locus in which
the industrial spirit came to fruition. If Eurasia were
controlled by a single power, even the possessors of
America and Africa could not hope to contend effectively against it. As late as World War II and the ensuing Cold War, strategists believed that, if this Eurasian
giant and productive region were to fall into a single
pair of hands, it could write finis to opposition located
elsewhere.
An America linked with Eurasia would be very
strong; an America opposed by Eurasia, very weak.
In many ways this is still true. Modern economies revolve around economies of scale industries, industries
in which unit costs decrease with greater production.
How many economies of scale industries are situated
elsewhere? Where does the most sophisticated manufacturing occur? Where are the great agricultural
and mineral resources but in Europe, Russia, and the
United States?
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255
256
Land bases facilitate Asias transition to democracy. It is no accident that the Communist Party
School in Beijing is now examining a future in which
the Communist Party of China (CPC) will either lose
power or be diluted as a monopolistic political influence. Experts have studied the examples of Taiwan
and Singapore as they coped with the prospect of opposition. Singapore is most attractive from the Chinese point of view because Lee Kuan Yews Peoples
Action Party has maintained its dominance since 1965.
Chiang Ching-kuo ruled on behalf of the Kuomintang
Paty (KMT) in Taiwan until the mid-1990s, but then
recruited the Democratic Progressive Party as a loyal
opposition, and it won the election in 1996. Gradually acknowledging the need for change, the CPC understands that until it achieves democratic openness
both politically and economically, it will not be able to
join key, high profile international groupings like the
Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the G-7.
How can the United States sophisticatedly but not intrusively assist this process? As in Europe, the critical
idea is provide a backstop to allies in the region so that
they would not be victims of pressure or territorial
expansion by the mainland.
THE ROLE OF THE U.S. ARMY:
SHAPING RELATIONSHIPS
The U.S. Army has critical roles in two major U.S.
objectives: (1) maintaining U.S. links to Eurasia and
creating an overbalance of power; and, (2) securing
the democratic transition in Eastern Europe and facilitating a similar transition in Eastern Asia. To perform
these functions, the Army will ultimately need on-
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259
260
CHAPTER 14
OFFSHORE BALANCING OR
OVERBALANCING? A PRELIMINARY
EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECT
OF U.S. TROOP PRESENCE ON THE POLITICAL
BEHAVIOR OF REGIONAL PARTNERS
Jordan Becker
In this volume, John Mearsheimer and Richard
Rosecrance address the role of U.S. Landpower in an
era of U.S. strategic rebalancing toward the Asia Pacific region.1 Their assessments differ significantly, but
are not mutually exclusive. Mearsheimer emphasizes
the importance of dealing with a rising China, the
U.S. shift away from counterinsurgency in the wider
Middle East, and the Armys lack of operational utility in a major conflict in Asia, as opposed to Europe.
At the same time, he predicts that the United States
will gradually and inexorably decrease its presence in
Europe, which will leave the Army with a diminishing role in that region. He envisions the United States
maintaining an over-the-horizon capability in areas
of concern, an approach which he and others have
referred to as offshore balancing.2
Rosecrance, on the other hand, focuses on the strategic utility of land forces. He emphasizes the geostrategic and economic importance of Europe, noting the
importance of the Euro-Atlantic economic community,
specifically highlighting ongoing Transatlantic Trade
and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations. He
sees the West as an important strategic grouping,
the continued cohesion of which is supported by U.S.
land presence in Europe. Perhaps more critically, he
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263
RESEARCH DESIGN
Dependent Variable.
The dependent variable in this analysis is the
alignment, or foreign policy orientation, of potential
partners and allies of the United States, as measured
by the proximity of a states ideal point in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA)7 to that of the
United States. Ideal point proximity, or the difference
between state is ideal point in UNGA votes in year t
and that of the United States, is the best available indicator of attitudinal shifts and polarization in world
politicswhen global politics are more polarized,
average ideal point proximity numbers increase (see
Figure 14-2). Ideal point proximity is not only indicative of foreign policy orientation on issues of global
importance; it also corresponds with more strategic
and even operational measures of alignment. Among
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members, for example, ideal point is highly correlated with
an Atlanticist (broadly pro-American)8 strategic foreign policy orientation.9 Among NATO members, an
Atlanticist foreign policy orientation offers a powerful
explanation for resource allocation toward military
operations, a crucial indicator of not only strategic
alignment, but willingness to share the burden of collective defense and security.10 In short, ideal point
proximity is a powerful measure for the influence the
United States is able to exercise on other states across
an array of strategically important areas, and therefore
quite useful in testing the effect of U.S. troop presence
on foreign policy alignment.
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266
267
268
269
270
Table 14-1
271
Table 14-2
274
Table 14-3
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276
277
278
279
280
281
relevant variable that the United States can control directly, unlike the presence and proximity of threats, the
wealth or population of partner states, or the nature of
those states regimes. Trade volume, which is, to an
extent, amenable to policy decisions, appears less correlated with foreign policy alignment than does troop
presence. In a period in which the United States and
its partners are facing significant resource constraints
and negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership as well
as the TTIP, the United States would appear to have
significant opportunities to achieve complementarity
between the stationing of land forces and intensification of economic interdependence.
ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 14
1. See Mearsheimer, Chap. 2, and Rosecrance, Chap. 13, in
this volume.
2. Christopher Layne, From Preponderance to Offshore Balancing: Americas Future Grand Strategy, International Security,
Vol. 22, No. 1, 1997, pp. 86-124. John J. Mearsheimer, The Future
of the American Pacifier, Foreign Affairs, 2001, pp. 46-61. John J.
Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, WW Norton &
Company, 2001, p. 63.
3. John J. Mearsheimer, Back to the Future: Instability in
Europe after the Cold War, International Security, Vol. 15, No. 1,
1990, pp. 5-56.
4. Sten Rynning, Germany is More than Europe Can Handle: Or, Why NATO Remains a Pacifier, NATO Defence College Research Paper No. 96, Rome, Italy: NATO Defence College,
September 2013.
5. Tim Kane, Global US troop deployment, 19502005,
Report, Washington, DC: Center for Data Analysis, 2006, p. 2-6.
Active Duty Military Personnel StrengthsBy Regional Area and by
Country, Washington, DC: Department of Defense, available from
www.defense.gov/faq/pis/mil_strength.html.
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283
13. Carla Martinez Machain and T. Clifton Morgan, The Effect of US Troop Deployment on Host States Foreign Policy,
Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 39, No. 1, 2013, pp. 102-123.
14. Mancur Olson and Richard Zeckhauser, An Economic
Theory of Alliances, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol.
48, No. 3, 1966, pp. 266-279.
15. Katherine Barbieri and Omar Keshk, Correlates of War
Project Trade Data Set Codebook, 1009, Version 3.0, 2012, available from correlatesofwar.org; Katherine Barbieri, Omar M. G. Keshk, and Brian Pollins, Trading Data: Evaluating our Assumptions and Coding Rules, Conflict Management and Peace Science,
Vol. 26, No. 5, 2012, pp. 471491.
16. Richard N. Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest in the Modern World, Vol. 386, New York: Basic
Books, 1986.
17. Christian Skrede Gleditsch, Distance Between Capital
Cities, Data, Etc., available from privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~ksg/
data-5.html.
18. Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances, Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1987.
19. Thorsten Beck, George Clarke, Alberto Groff, Philip
Keefer, and Patrick Walsh, New Tools in Comparative Political
Economy: The Database of Political Institutions, The World Bank
Economic Review Vol. 15, No. 1, 2001, pp. 165-176.
20. Witold J. Henisz and Edward D. Mansfield, Votes and
Vetoes: The Political Determinants of Commercial Openness,
International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 1, 2006, pp. 189-212.
21. Michael W. Doyle, Liberalism and World Politics, American Political Science Review, Vol. 80, No. 4, 1986, pp. 1151-1169.
22. Nathaniel Beck and Jonathan N. Katz, What To Do (and
Not To Do) with Time-Series Cross-Section Data, American Political Science Review, 1995, pp. 634-647.
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CHAPTER 15
EUROPE, LANDPOWER, AND THEIR
IMPORTANCE IN U.S. GRAND STRATEGY
Seth A. Johnston
What is Europes place in U.S. grand strategy, and
what are the implications for U.S. Landpower? The
contemporary discourse on the U.S. pivot to the
Asia-Pacific and the accompanying maritime-focused
Air-Sea Battle doctrine discount the grand strategic
significance of Landpower and of Europe. Yet, both
remain deeply important and intertwined with one
another. Landpower is central in European affairs,
and Europe remains vitally important to the United
States. As a result, U.S. grand strategy must avoid pivoting off balance by according too little consideration
to the two. The most significant issues at stake concern
the futures of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) and U.S. military bases in Europe. Sound
strategic and empirical reasons suggest that NATO
will endure, and that force presence in Europe offers
the United States significant advantages.
HOW IMPORTANT IS EUROPE TO
THE UNITED STATES?
The rise of China and the U.S. pivot to the Asia-Pacific implies a relative decline in Europes significance
to the United States. Indeed, much of the controversy
over the initial use of the term pivot stemmed from
the concerns of Americas European allies over the
prospect of abandonment and of those elements of the
U.S. foreign policy establishment that seek to main-
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The maintenance of strong Landpower commitments underpinned the tense but stable balance of
power after the war. The Iron Curtain that descended
across Europe after 1945 defined the battle lines of the
Cold War and was a direct result of the Landpower
situation at the end of World War II. Following the
Cold War, the enlargement of NATO and the EU were
among the most important instruments in creating a
continental Europe whole and free.8 Even today,
Landpower remains central to contemporary European political and economic life. However, noncontinental Britain remains outside two of the most significant
features of the EU: the Euro common currency and the
Schengen Agreement that allows passport-free travel
across national borders.
The role of U.S. Landpowers consistent application as a contributor to peace and stability in Europe
should not be taken for granted. Many of the same
ingredients that historically have destabilized Europe persist today. Unresolved disputes and frozen
conflicts in the region continue in Cyprus, Kosovo,
Transnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenian-Turkish
relations, and Greek complaints with (the former Yugoslav republic of) Macedonia. Ethno-linguistic differences lingering from Russification policies in the
former Soviet Union loom in the Baltic states, Ukraine,
the Caucasus, and others.
Europes frontiers remain prone to more open conflict. In the past decade, war in the Middle East has
twice bordered NATO territory in Turkey, leading the
Alliance to deploy additional land forces there in the
lead-up to the Iraq War in 2003 and during the Syrian
Civil War following the shooting down of a Turkish jet
and the shelling of Turkish territory by Syrian forces
in 2012.9 The revolutions of the Arab Spring begin-
293
ning in 2010 have contributed to violence and instability across the Mediterranean in North Africa, where
European and/or U.S. forces have since intervened in
Libya, Mali, Niger, and the Central African Republic.10
Europes risk of great power competition and conflict also remains real. The Cold War may be over,
but that was not the end of history. Russia remains
an enormously important country with vital interests
in Europe. Russia is the largest country in the world
by land area, possessed of territory stretching across
nine time zones, the worlds largest arsenal of nuclear
weapons,11 and an advanced conventional armaments
industry. It is the second largest global producer of
oil and of natural gas,12 and is a major supplier to Europe.13 Russias leading political figure since the Cold
War, Vladimir Putin, has sought to reestablish Russias regional influence and has spearheaded such
initiatives as the Collective Security Treaty Organization and Shanghai Cooperation Organization as multilateral alternatives to Western institutions like the
Partnership for Peace and Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe. More significant is Russias demonstrated willingness to use force unilaterally. Russia invaded Georgia, its neighbor and a former Soviet republic, in 2008 following several years
of Georgian overtures toward the EU and NATO. The
United States transported Georgian troops home from
their participation in the Iraq War coalition but otherwise avoided direct intervention in the conflict. Russian troops, deployed ostensibly to protect Russian
minorities in the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and
South Ossetia, still occupy these regions. Russias relations with Ukraine appear to be following the model
of Georgia. Following Ukraines apparent turn toward
Western-style democracy after the Orange Revolu-
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298
Libya from February to October 2011. It has also pursued naval and counterpiracy operations off the Horn
of Africa and the Gulf of Aden, a training mission in
Iraq, and advisory assistance to the African Union,
among others. At Chicago in 2012, NATO leaders recommitted to a winding down of the ISAF mission by
2014, while maintaining a longer-term political promise and also went on to address wide-ranging regional
and global security concerns in a 65 point statement.
NATO also embarked on a cost saving reduction of its
integrated military command structure and promoted
a Smart Defence initiative for states to cooperate
and create efficiency in their force structure planning
and equipment acquisitions.
NATO after Afghanistan.
NATO after Afghanistan therefore appears set to
continue two seemingly contradictory trends: one regional and conservative, the other increasingly global
and innovative. Both will be shaped not only by the
last decades experience in Afghanistan, but also by
the widening gap in capabilities between the United
States and its allies, as well as downward pressure on
defense budgets across the Alliance.
First, NATO increasingly will emphasize its traditional purpose of territorial defense in Europe. This
reflects a chastened appetite for large scale expeditionary operations like those in Afghanistan. It also
reflects the maturing role of Eastern European NATO
members, many of which joined the Alliance during
the Afghanistan era but which value membership primarily as a guarantee against Russia.
Second, NATO will sustain an increasingly extraregional or global outlook despite reduced likelihood
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ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 15
1. See europa.eu/about-eu/facts-figures/economy/index_en.htm.
2. See www.nato.int/nato_static/assets/pdf/pdf_2012_04/20120413
_PR_CP_2012_047_rev1.pdf; International Institute for Strategic
Studies, The Military Balance, 2012.
3. See transatlantic.sais-jhu.edu/publications/books/Transatlantic
_Economy_2011/te_2011.pdf.
4. A. J. P. Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809-1918: A History
of the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1948, p. 10.
5. See, for example, Norman Davies, Europe: A History, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1996; Paul Kennedy, The Rise and
Fall of the Great Powers, New York: Random House, 1987.
6. See, for example, Sidney Bradshaw Fay, The Origins of the
World War, Vol. 1, New York: Macmillan, 1928, pp. 42, 204.
7. Casualty data varies widely, with some crediting the Eastern Front with up to three-quarters of German losses during the
war. A recent statistical study places the figure closer to twothirds: Rdiger Overmans, Deutsche militrische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg (German Military Casualties in the Second World War),
Munich, Germany: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2000.
8. George H. W. Bush, Remarks by the President of the United
States to the Citizens in Mainz, Rheingoldhalle, Mainz, Federal
Republic of Germany, May 31, 1989.
9. See www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_92555.htm?
10. See www.eeas.europa.eu/csdp/missions-and-operations/.
11. See www.sipri.org/yearbook/2013/files/sipri-yearbook-2013-cha
pter-6-overview.
12. See www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/Key
World2013.pdf.
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306
CHAPTER 16
PREVENT, SHAPE, WIN IN CONTEXT:
THE ASIA-PACIFIC
Albert S. Willner
The author is indebted to his Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) colleagues Dr. Tom Bickford, Dr. Alison
Kaufman, Dr. Joel Wuthnow, Dr. David Finkelstein
and Ms. Tamara Hemphill. Their U.S. Army in Asia
research insights proved invaluable. Some of the concepts discussed in this paper are elaborated on in Joel
Wuthnow et al, The U.S. Army in Asia: Opportunities
and Challenges Report of a Workshop of Experts (Alexandria: VA, CNA, August 2013) and forthcoming CNA
reports on related topics.
This chapter discusses how the Asia-Pacific landscape is changing, the potential implications, and how
the United States Army can support the U.S. rebalance
to the Asia-Pacific region.
THE SETTING: THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION
In order to develop an understanding of how the
Army can best support the U.S. rebalance while meeting obligations elsewhere, it is important to outline
some issues for consideration:
First, in terms of potential conflict, the North
Korean challenge continues to be the dominant
and most pressing one for the United States and
its key allies and partners. The outbreak of hostilities on the Korean peninsula could potentially involve three nuclear powers and would
have dramatic consequences throughout the
region. U.S. alliance commitments to the Republic of Korea and Japan to deter and defend
will continue to require critical U.S. military
attention in order to keep peace and maintain
stability on and around the Korean peninsula.
Second, the rise of China has enormous consequences for the United States, the region,
and the world. The United States is commit308
Sixth, in the past decade, for several Asia-Pacific states, economic and security issues in the
maritime domain have led to a shift in attention
and resources away from a traditional Landpower focus. This shift to the maritime has
important implications for the U.S. military. In
particular, U.S. Landpower leaders must consider how best to secure important land assets
that are important to securing the maritime
domain.
Seventh, other powers of consequence are rising, most notably India and Indonesia, potentially opening up new opportunities for the
United States. The U.S. military can play an
important role in working with its counterparts
to address common security interests in the
region.
Eighth, beyond the Republic of Korea and Okinawa in Japan, the willingness of states in the
region to accept the basing of large numbers
of U.S. ground forces on their soil appears unlikely in the near term. Maintaining a smaller
footprint has implications for rotational and
temporary deployments and perhaps a greater
emphasis on engaging key states to preposition
equipment offshore.
Finally, regional institutions in Asia are playing a greater role in the development of international rules and norms, communication,
and influence. Interactions with key allies and
partners within these institutions are likely
to become more important in meeting shared
interests.
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311
312
313
314
315
gating risk. Assessing key allies and partners changing needs and will and matching these against U.S.
requirements will be an important first step in getting
the right mix needed to advance common security
interests. In some cases, even a small partner contribution may yield important benefits in advancing an
important relationship.
Maximize Opportunities that an Army
4-Star Brings to the Region.
The 2013 elevation to the rank of general for the
Commander, United States Army, Pacific, means
that the United States and the Army will have a new
leader well positioned to advance joint and combined
engagement, exercise, command, control, and coordination initiatives of importance. In a region where the
majority of countries top uniformed military leaders
are Army, this change has the potential to dramatically enhance PACOM and Army objectives among
key leaders in key states.
CONCLUSION
The U.S. rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region
presents tremendous opportunities and challenges for
the U.S. Army. Successfully implementing the rebalance in a diverse and complex strategic environment
will not only require understanding U.S. intent and
objectives, but those of key states in the region. As Donilon commented, rebalancing means devoting the
time, effort and resources necessary to get each [pillar
of the strategy] right.3 It is hoped that this chapter
contributes to that endeavor.
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ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 16
1. Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century
Defense, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, January 2012, available from www.defense.gov/news/Defense_Strategic_
Guidance.pdf.
2. Remarks by Tom Donilon, National Security Advisor to
the President: The United States and the Asia-Pacific in 2013,
The Asia Society,New York, March 11, 2013, available from www.
whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/03/11/remarks-tom-donilonnational-security-advisory-president-united-states-a.
3. Ibid.
317
CHAPTER 17
PIVOTING WITHOUT STUMBLING IN ASIA
Joseph Da Silva
Douglas Ollivant
Air-Sea Battle (ASB) has been the topic of much
discussion since the Barack Obama administrations
announcements in 2010 of a strategic rebalance (popularly known as the pivot) toward the Asia-Pacific
region. The ASB concept envisions a combined Air
Force and Navy team overcoming the anti-access
(preventing an opponent from entering ones territory) and area denial (limiting an opponents mobility once inside your territory) strategies (A2/AD) of
potential adversaries. Since 2010, many policymakers
have hailed ASB as the new paradigm of future warfare.1 Andrew Krepinevich, one of the originators of
the ASB concept, maintains that Air-Sea Battle is:
focused less on repelling traditional cross-border invasions, effecting regime change, and conducting largescale stability operations . . . and more on preserving
access to key regions and the global commons, which
are essential to U.S. security and prosperity.2
Air-Sea Battle is particularly important as the United States looks to the Pacific, say its supporters, since
it can deter China from pursuing territorial expansion
while reassuring U.S. allies of our commitment to
their defense and, by extension, to regional stability.
While many proponents of Air-Sea Battle (including
the Navy and Air Forces Air-Sea Battle Office, created in 2011) claim that ASB is an operational concept
rather than a strategy (perhaps in response to critiques
319
We suggest that while ASB may serve as an effective operational concept in solving the A2/AD
problem, it fails as a strategic concept for at least four
reasons. Air-Sea Battle fails to effectively deter China,
does not reassure U.S. allies in the region, exacerbates
the security dilemma and thereby hinders engagement, and puts the United States on the wrong side of
an economic cost equation.
HISTORY OF THE REBALANCE
AND AIR- SEA BATTLE
The present prevalence of ASB cannot be understood apart from the decision to rebalance toward the
Pacific; however, the genesis of ASB predates U.S.
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321
While the new strategy intended to increase investments along diplomatic, economic, and military
efforts, the diplomatic leg was to be the largest and
leading element. However, as with many policies,
the sequencing and timing of these lines of action has
proven problematic, as has the intended emphasis on
diplomacy. Soon after the pivot was announced, many
think tanks and defense intellectuals began to write
about and publicize ideas about the military portion
of the rebalancing strategy, as did a number of the services most affected.
In April 2010, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) published a 123-page report:
AirSea Battle: A Point-of-Departure Operational Concept.10 While technically the product of a private think
tank, this report has been seen in many quarters as
a statement of the Pentagons military intentions toward China. In August 2011, the Pentagon announced
the formation of the Air-Sea Battle Office, and in January 2012, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs published
the Joint Operational Assured Access Concept (JOAC)
and nested ASB underneath its overarching operational framework.11 Finally, in May 2013, the ASB
office published the official document detailing the
ASB concept: Air-Sea Battle: Service Collaboration
to Address Anti-Access & Area Denial Challenges.12
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323
324
325
Failure to Deter.
ASBs fundamental claim is its ability to deter
China and other adversaries from exerting military influence in the region. Deterrence is a form of coercive
violence that, when used appropriately, convinces an
adversary not to take a certain action. In order to exercise effective deterrence a state must demonstrate
both the capability to carry out the threat and the resolve or commitment to carry through on the threat if
needed. ASB fails to deter China because both halves
of this equation are not fully demonstrated.
Air-Sea Battle relies, by its very nature, on seabased platforms. U.S. naval assets have enjoyed an
asymmetric technological advantage over potential
adversaries arguably since the end of World War II,
and certainly since the end of the Cold War. However,
the rise of regional powers such as China, equipped
with their own high-technology industries and capable of producing cutting-edge electronic consumer
goods, means that the United States asymmetric advantage is likely to diminish. U.S. military assets may
continue to have an advantage in terms of degree,
but they will no longer have an advantage in terms of
kind. Missile technologies produced by the Chinese,
for instance, may be inferior to American versions, but
they will be good enough that if employed in mass
against an inherently vulnerable target, they will have
a high probability of hit and kill.
In the cyber realm, while relative capacities are untestedat least at the unclassified levelit is far from
clear that U.S. cyber defenses will stand up to an attack
by Chinese military or closely aligned civilian hackers or cyber militias.23 Again, much of the hard-
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
7. Quadrenial Defense Review Report, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, 2010, pp. 32-33, available from www.comw.
org/qdr/fulltext/1002QDR2010.pdf. The quoted passage continues:
The concept will address how air and naval forces will integrate capabilities across all operational domainsair, sea, land,
space, and cyberspaceto counter growing challenges to U.S.
freedom of action. As it matures, the concept will also help
guide the development of future capabilities needed for effective power projection operations.
334
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Air-Sea Battle: Service Collaboration to Address Anti-Access &
Area Denial Challenges, p. 4.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Shambaugh, p. 298.
24. Richard Clarke, All US Electronics from China could be
infected, Defense Tech, available from defensetech.org/2012/03/29/
richard-clarke-all-u-s-electronics-from-china-could-be-infected/.
25. Ross Babbage, Australia Needs Strategic Rethink on
Submarines, The Diplomat.com, May 20, 2013, available from the
diplomat.com/flashpoints-blog/2013/05/20/australia-needs-strategicrethink-on-submarines/.
26. Ben Schreer, Australia and AirSea Battle: Not Sold Yet,
The Diplomat.com, April 22, 2013, available from thediplomat.com/
flashpoints-blog/2013/04/22/australia-and-airsea-battle-not-sold-yet.
27. Ibid.
28. Thomas C.Schelling, Arms and Influence, New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1966, p. 34.
29. Robert Jervis, Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,
World Politics, Vol. 30, No. 2, 1978, pp. 167-214. Copyright 1978 by
Cambridge University Press.
30. Ibid.
31. Jaffe.
32. Chinas Missiles, The Economist Online, December 6,
2010, available from www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/12/
chinese_missile_ranges.
335
336
CHAPTER 18
BACK TO REALITY:
WHY LANDPOWER TRUMPS IN THE
NATIONAL REBALANCE TOWARD ASIA
Robert Chamberlain
This chapter appeared previously in Armed Forces Journal,
May 1, 2013. The author gratefully acknowledges permission
to republish.
338
339
340
despite superpower involvement. Thus, the deployment of an American brigade to assist in the defense
of an ally signals resolve and contributes military capacity without threatening China directly in a way
that the deployment of a carrier task force or an air
wing simply cannot.
Landpower is uniquely advantageous for a strategy of containment-lite, due to its ability to achieve regional stability without increasing Chinese insecurity.
However, the American Landpower strategy in Asia
must encompass much more than the rapid deployment of combat units into crises. Landpower must
address the full spectrum of regional defense needs,
which require careful cultivation of defense partnerships and capabilities in order to match the right force
with each emerging contingency. The use of Landpower in Asia must also inform American doctrine
and procurement strategies, as the Army returns to its
conventional mission while expanding other capabilities. The chief of staff of the Army refers to these three
elements as Win, Shape, and Prevent, respectively. Together, they form the three components of Americas
strategic solution.
THE SPECTRUM OF LANDPOWER
It is hard to think about Landpower without the
boom of a cannon, the rumble of a tank, or the endless
rows of soldiers on parade. But the full conventional
capability of the United States is only one aspect of
Landpower, and one that should be imagined alongside the shuffling of paper, the snapping of clipboards,
and a small headquarters element winding their way
through an airport. Landpower strategy must shape
the security environment prior to the arrival of con-
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342
Next are the types of conventional army interactions that are normally associated with Landpower:
major joint exercises, rotating units, or even a permanent presence. These sorts of actions are easily understood and retain the desirable stabilizing properties of
Landpower, but are also rather expensive. In the contemporary budgetary environment, it is imperative to
maximize the cost-effectiveness of American defense
initiatives. By preparing the ground through early
shaping operations and staff integration, the United
States will retain the flexibility to move forces quickly
throughout the region while avoiding the costs of
keeping units permanently on station.
PROCUREMENT AND POSTURE
In addition to a shift in defense strategy that prioritizes the stabilizing effects of Landpower over the
inherently threatening alternatives discussed later, it
will also be necessary to build a Landpower capacity
that is designed to address both Pacific geography and
Chinese capabilities. This represents both a return to
the modern Armys conventional roots and a significant evolution in how it understands its role.
The Chinese regional military threat is primarily
conventional and must be checked by conventional
capabilities. While it would be foolhardy for the U.S.
military to completely forget the lessons of the past
decade and refuse to prepare units for COIN and
stability operations, it would be equally myopic to
decide that these operations ought to be an organizational priority in years to come. When China has used
offensive military force to assert its political will, it has
not been a particularly subtle affair in terms of either
manpower or effect. Thus, a doctrine and equipment
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344
the U.S. air defense capability, and investment in landbased anti-ship systems. All these capabilities, with
the exception of some elements of missile defense, are
currently met in Air-Sea Battle by the Air Force and the
Navy. That means what the U.S. perceives as defending its allies, the Chinese could legitimately perceive
as an expansion of power in the region. By contrast,
land-based A2/AD systems are purely defensive.
Once the attacker has been defeated (the planes driven
off, the missiles shot down, the ships sunk, etc.), the
system has no further capability. For example, a joint
strike fighter could shoot down incoming aircraft and
then be rearmed to attack ground targets. The same is
simply not true for land-based air defense.
ALTERNATIVES TO LANDPOWER
One approach to regional defense which has captured the imagination of American policymakers in
the aftermath of the Libyan revolution is to supply
American firepower to local allies through the use
of precision strikes guided by small special operations teams. In a conventional scenario, this approach
would have our allies fight on their land, while we
contributed firepower and technological capability
from air and sea.
This is the Rumsfeldian dream rebornthe lowcost policy option that leverages American technical
know-how and the ultimate expression of the send
a bullet, not a man philosophy of casualty-aversion.
The tools for implementing this vision are myriad:
strike aircraft deployed from bases in the region or
carrier groups, missiles launched from destroyers and
submarines, or even long-range bombers flying from
Diego Garcia or Missouri.
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346
The solution to this problem, from an off-shore firepower perspective, is simply to place more firepower
in the area in order to compound the difficulties an
aggressor would face in achieving a quick victory. Of
course, more firepower would simply encourage the
aggressor to move that much quicker, thus requiring
more firepower, and so on. This is a classic conflict spiral, which has the twin disadvantages of being costly
and destabilizing. It will increase Chinese militarism
and fail to control American defense outlays, which is
to say that it utterly fails to achieve the overall strategic goal of delinking military and economic disputes,
fostering stability and discouraging militarism.
AIR-SEA BATTLE: THE NEW
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
Air-Sea Battle, the doctrine being created by the
Navy and Air Force to support the rebalance toward
Asia, offers a different approach. In Air Sea Battle:
Promoting Stability in an Era of Uncertainty and
Air-Sea Battle: Clearing the Fog, the service proponents of this doctrine argue that projecting American
power in the region will require the ability to get there
in the first place. With the growing Chinese investment in A2/AD technologies, there is serious concern
about Americas ability to project power credibly. In
order to ensure that the U.S. military can remain a viable instrument of national policy in Asia, this doctrine
proposes to integrate air and sea power in such a way
that American forces can arrive safely in the region
and undertake whatever missions are necessary.
To that end, Air-Sea Battle requires that A2/AD
systems are attacked simultaneously and in-depth by
all available means. It is not enough to simply shoot
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350
RETURNING TO REALISM
After a decade of nation-building and revisionist
adventures, America seems to be returning to a realist
foreign policy. Prudence is once again the supreme virtue, security and stability the guiding lights. The hinterlands in the arc of instability, where transnational
terrorism networks go to regroup, are the purview of
special operations and drones; the bulk of American
military power is being refocused on missions of central national importance. Chief among these is ensuring the peace and prosperity of East Asia. With the renewed focus that the rebalance toward Asia implies
must come new thinking. Dominance in the air and
on the sea may demonstrate the extent of American
power, but it also creates a zero-sum security environment. In the world of Air-Sea Battle, America and
China may find themselves locked in a security competition that serves the interest of neither state.
By contrast, Landpower represents a flexible tool
that is uniquely suited to the Asian security environment. The Navy remains the essential guarantor of
global commerce and the freedom of the seas, and the
Air Force gives policymakers an unparalleled set of
global strike options. But only the Army and Marines
can provide a security commitment to Americas partners in Asia that does not simultaneously threaten
China itself. Landpower is the only avenue by which
America can enhance regional security and stability,
deter Chinese militarism and encourage Chinese commitment to the global status quo. It is Landpower,
and Landpower alone, that can bring Americas Asia
policy back to reality.
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CHAPTER 19
PREVENT, SHAPE, WIN IN CONTEXT:
THE CENTRAL REGION
Isaiah Wilson III
The author is indebted to his U.S. Central Command and U.S.
Africa Command colleagues. Some of the concepts and figures discussed and included in this chapter are representative
of concepts and concept (graphical) designs reflected in the
2013 U.S. Central Command Theater Strategy, September 2013.
That withstanding, the concepts and propositions presented
in this chapter reflect the authors views and opinions alone,
and do not represent official U.S. Central Command, Joint Staff,
Department of Defense, nor U.S. Government policy, more
generally.
The United States is now approaching a grandstrategic inflection point.1 Domestic and international
transitions will both challenge and create great opportunities for U.S. Central Command, which serves as
the fulcrum of U.S. vital national interestsinterests
that lie at the heart of U.S. global power.
The U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) operating environment currently includes 20 countries.
Among them are nascent democracies recovering from
years of fighting, fragile nations attempting to regain
control of ungoverned space, and government leaders cautiously assessing our actions (and those of our
adversaries) to map their future security framework.
For the foreseeable future, three of the Nations four
formally-stated missionsdefense of the Homeland,
counterproliferation of weapons of mass destruction
(WMD), and ensuring the free flow of resourceswill
remain anchored to the Central Region.
353
The geography of the USCENTCOM areas of responsibility (AOR) is a lynchpin of the global economy
and includes critical international sea lines of communication (SLOCs), including the maritime chokepoints
of the Suez Canal, Strait of Hormuz, and the Bab alMandeb Strait. With over 550 million people, 18 languages, hundreds of dialects, and 22 separate ethnic
groups, the demographics in the AOR create an opportunity for friction and rivalry. The region includes
both the wealthiest and most impoverished of the
worlds Muslim-majority states; abundant petroleum
and natural gas reserves; an aspiring nuclear power
and known state-sponsors of terrorism; former Soviet
Union client states; prolific criminal networks trafficking in narcotics, weapons, and persons; and a wide
variety of violent extremist organizations (VEOs). (See
Figure 19-1.)
These conditions are further impacted, compounded, by underlying currents of growing SunniShia sectarian divide, a rising struggle between radical and moderate forms of government and styles of
governance, endemic economic disparity, and an
equally growing and worrisome age gap, exacerbated
by an enlarging youth populationover 40 percent of
the region is between 15-49 years of age. The region
has never been peaceful and enduring U.S. national
vital interests have repeatedly required deft, vigorous U.S. involvement in specific affairs. The intersection of these trendsgeography, demographics,
and political-military conflictswill challenge the
equilibrium of the regional balance of power for the
coming decades.
354
it calls the Prevent-Shape-Win (PSW) strategic solution. PSW is a new construct designed to explain the
various roles of the Army. It is, at bottom, an attempt
to break an old paradigm where Army leaders only
focused on one end of the conflict spectrumconventional warat the cost of the other types and kinds of
war and warfare that could have prevented conflict or
even shaped the environment in more favorable terms
for the United States. (See Figure 19-2.)
I would like to acknowledge the contributions of Rob Chamberlain, Joe Da Silva, and Cara Clarke in development of this
concept design, as part of our work in 2013 leading the CSAs
Prevent-Shape Group, as part of the CSAs Unified Quest Army
Futures Wargame.
356
357
government initiatives as an important part of our national diplomatic and homeland security strategies.3
As each of these shaping strategies is highly contextspecific, the forces designed to carry them out must be
agile and adaptivetailored, scalable, and task-organized to accomplish their specific strategic objectives.
There are several key and critical challenges companioning a Prevent-Shape-Win strategic approach,
two of particular importance:
1. The Challenge of Coercion: Coercive diplomacy, where the threat of force is used to prevent
undesired behavior (deterrence) or cause compliance
(compellence), requires both capability and credibility
to be effective. It is not enough to have forces available; the target state must believe that force will be
used for as long as is necessary to alter its behavior.
Moreover, the threat must be specific enough that the
target believes it can be avoided through behavior
modificationtailored deterrence causes compliance,
imprecise deterrence causes reaction.
2. The Challenge of Commitment: Whether adjusting allies or adversaries calculations of U.S. strategic
commitment to a region, facilitating Prevent or Win
activities, or supporting whole-of-government efforts,
the armed forces must do the following: provide tailored capabilities, demonstrate an enduring presence
that will be there in a crisis, and meet interlocutors on
their own terms. It will not work to show up with a
lot of the wrong assets. It will not work to have a big,
expensive, transient capability that is too big to risk.
It will not work to make our partners speak our language about our concerns. We have to meet people
where they are to succeed. (See Figure 19-3.)
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I would like to acknowledge the contributions of Rob Chamberlain, Joe Da Silva, and Cara Clarke in development of this
concept design, as part of our work in 2013 leading the CSAs
Prevent-Shape Group, as part of the CSAs Unified Quest Army
Futures Wargame.
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Shape.7
Shaping underlying currents to influence the future is paramount to prevention of future conflicts.
Shaping efforts cross the entire theater-strategic
framework (near-mid-long term actions). Building
partner capacity (BPC), conducting regional exercises,
and developing a regional security architecture not
only supports U.S. efforts to deter adversaries but also
creates opportunities to share ideas that cross cultural
and geographic divides. These strategies require the
right forces to be placed at decisive points within the
Central Region theater in order to conduct successful
deterrence and compellence and thus facilitate Prevent and Win requirements. Through Shape activities,
USCENTCOM aims to adjust the strategic calculations
of allies and adversaries by building the strength of
our partners through a variety of means, from foreign
military sales to direct reinforcement, and by demonstrating to our adversaries our preparedness and
resolve; and they are designed in such ways that support whole-of-government and multilateral initiatives
as an important part of our national diplomatic and
homeland security strategies. USCENTCOM, through
its Theater Strategy and Theater Campaign Plan (TCP),
seeks to manage long-range shaping activities increasingly through a by-with-through, conditions-based
BPC collective approach, with a forward-presence
posture of a minimum compliment of maximumeffectiveness U.S. forces forward-postured in-theater
for reassurance of U.S. durable commitments both for
friendly nations and partners in the region, as well as
reassurance of U.S. capability and resolve for our adversaries upon which they can adjust and moderate
their strategic calculations.
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friends and allies, as well as adversaries, of U.S. resolve. Forward headquarters signal U.S. commitment
not only to its own unilateral interests, but to regional
partner security interests, while demonstrating robust
U.S. physical force capability and capacity.
Robust, Emergent Regional Partnerships.
Over the past decade, USCENTCOM has accelerated its Build Partners/Build Partner Capacity shaping efforts, partnering with regional nations in operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya (the latter now a
formal part of the U.S. Africa Command AOR). This
period of time has witnessed unprecedented support
for regional maritime air defense exercises. Also, exercises such as the International Mine Counter Measure
exercise have united over 40 nations from six continents in defense of the region. Through these types
of mature/maturing collective regional partnership
activities, the United States is able to set and shape the
conditions across the Central Region that will one day
afford the Nation with a way to build down its own
forces committed to security efforts in the region bywith-through a building-up of regional countries
capabilities and capacities to advance security, stability, and prosperity across the region.
USCENTCOMs military forward presence and
military-to-military relations have led to a number
of big wins over the past few years, building off of
over at least 3 decades of dedicated foreign assistance
and security assistance investments. Over the past 2
years, USCENTCOM has made significant gains with
Gulf Cooperation Country (GCC) partners on establishment of bilateral defense plans against Iranian aggression. In the area of counterpiracy, through U.S.-
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CHAPTER 20
STRATEGY AND LANDPOWER
ON THE CONTINENT OF AFRICA
John Baskerville
In the October 25, 2013, installment of LiveatState,
The U.S. Department of States web chat program for
international journalists, Commander of United States
Africa Command (AFRICOM) General David M. Rodriguez and Assistant Secretary of State for African
Affairs Linda Thomas-Greenfield engaged journalists
from throughout the continent on U.S. foreign policy
and security cooperation in Sub-Saharan Africa.1 After
fielding several terrorism-related questions, the most
recent of which referenced terrorist activities in Mali
and Niger, Rodriguez asserted that the solution to
terrorism in the region is a long-term, broad, wholeof-government approach by all our partners, as well as
all the international community.2 He explained that
terrorism is not solved just by military operations,
but is ultimately contingent upon economic development, improvement in governance, and rule of
law and law enforcement.3 He characterized these
factors as capacities that the Department of Defense
(DoD), the Department of State, and the interagency
help build in African nations. Three key themes underpin Rodriguezs statements: 1) the inextricable link
between governance, development, opportunity, and
security issues on the continent; 2) the necessity of a
whole-of-government approach to complex security
issues; and 3) the notion that the ultimate objective for
the United States is to enable its African partners to
confront these security issues.
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for the breadth of the challenge leaves none of the enduring U.S. interests untouched.6 As evidenced by the
September 2012 attack in Benghazi and the January
2013 attack on a British oil facility in Algeria, extremist organizations pose a direct threat to the security of
the United States, its citizens, and its allies.7 Extremist
organizations are intricately tied to poor governance
and the lack of opportunity, security, stability, and
peacesometimes as inhibitors, sometimes as indicators, sometimes as by-products.8 As a result, the end of
countering violent extremist organizations demands
ways and means borne of effective and innovative
integration of all instruments of power.
Ends.
AFRICOM defines U.S. vital national security
interests in Africa as:
protecting the security of the global economic system,
preventing catastrophic attacks on the homeland,
developing secure and reliable partners, protecting
American citizens abroad, and protecting and advancing universal values.9
In support of these interests, AFRICOM aims its strategy at deterring and defeating near-term threats to
U.S. interests, along with:
building long-term partnerships that support and enable the objectives outlined in the U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa: strengthening democratic
institutions; spurring economic growth, advancing
trade and investment; advancing peace and security;
and promoting opportunity and development.10
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Ways.
One of AFRICOMs guiding principles is that:
over the long run, it will be Africans who will best be
able to address African security challenges, and USAFRICOM most effectively advances U.S. security
interests through focused security engagement with
African partners.11
This guiding principle, along with U.S. strategic defense guidance on low-cost, small-footprint approaches, helps shape the activities AFRICOM undertakes
in support of its objectives.12 In AFRICOMs theater
strategy and regional campaign plans, one observes a
spectrum of relatively small-scale activitiesreferred
to as operations, exercises, and security cooperation
engagements. They are often situated within a larger
Joint Interagency Intergovernmental Multinational
framework, aimed at enabling African partners to
shape a secure, peaceful, and prosperous regional order. Within this framework, U.S. military forces train,
assist, advise, and mentor African military forces. U.S.
forces undertake these tasks across a broad level of engagement, from bilateral to sub-regional and regional
engagements, and from the small-unit to the institutional level. Of course, discovering and killing or capturing violent extremists is essential to U.S. strategy as
well, but it does not represent the most prevalent use
of land forces across the continent.13
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against Al-Shabaab that had pushed the group mostly out of the capital, Mogadishu, and the port city
of Kismayo.23 In the larger framework of AFRICOMs
model for activities, this successful collaboration was
especially poignant. From the standpoint of building
partner capacity, relatively small-scale engagements
had enabled U.S. military mentors and advisers to
improve the capabilities of regional AMISOM forces
through training in skills, such as intelligence analysis
and countering improvised explosive devices. From
the standpoint of effective whole-of-government collaboration, AFRICOM closely coordinated with the
Department of State for its activities and received
funding for these engagements through the Department of State Global Peace Operations Initiatives Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance
(ACOTA) program.24
Yet, in this same address, Ham also took a moment to acknowledge the persistent threat Al-Shabaab
poses, to include the potential to launch future attacks
within Uganda and Kenya to undermine these states
will to continue to take the fight to the group. Indeed,
when Rodriguez appeared on LiveatState in the fall of
2013, it had been just over a month since Al-Shabaab
had launched a deadly attack on the Westgate Mall in
Nairobi. So, as much as AFRICOMs activities provide
a potential example for the successful employment of
strategic Landpower in a prevent and shape construct,
their work against groups who continuously transform, have no regard for borders and exploit seams,
and who viciously target will, demonstrates the
precarious nature of the human domain. The Chiefs
of the Land Forces describe the complex challenges
Landpower confronts in this way:
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The threat of hybrid warfare, involving multiple entities; the increasing ability of non-state actors to destabilize entire regions and challenge national forces; the
complexity of rules of engagement that constrain one
side and enable the other to operate with near impunity amongst the people . . . the increasing pace and
mutability of human interactions across boundaries,
through virtual connectivity, to form, act, dissolve,
and reform in pursuit of hostile purposes.25
Working in such a complex and potentially volatile environment, while relying on interagency and regional partners, raises numerous questions for those
willing to grapple with the concept of strategic Landpower. With regard to building partner capacity and
working with willing and able partners in the region,
one must think about the following dynamics:
How do the various populations conceptualize
what the United States deems as violent extremist organizations, and what makes their
narratives resonate or fall on deaf ears?
As the United States equips, trains, advises, and
mentors armed elements, how do the populations think of armed forces and militias and the
use of violence?
How do the governments and other political actors in the region view extremist organizations,
and what are the relationships between these
organizations and various political stakeholders and powerbrokers, especially in the wake
of ongoing disruptive events, such as the Arab
Spring?
How does the United States articulate threats
and security interests such that its activities
resonate as mutually beneficial global public
goods, as opposed to activities that support
narrow, selfish interests?26
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This quote addresses lessons from the past; however, a range of paradigm shifts make it a relevant
backdrop for thinking about AFRICOMs current focus and strategy. The overarching shift is a move away
from thinking of asymmetric threats strictly during
conflict and on the battlefield to thinking of asymmetric threats in a framework of prevention and shaping
across both physical and cognitive domains. Within
that framework, U.S. Army overmatch capabilities
become strategic Landpower efforts, sometimes kinetic and lethal, but often aimed at building partner
capacity to confront challenges. Traditional notions of
fighting on a battlefield transition to understanding
and interacting with dynamics of ungoverned spaces,
the Internet, traditional trade routes, urban centers,
and any of a number of unlimited spaces where narratives of violence may take root and give rise to
action. Defeat, while still including kinetic kill and
capture operations, now includes activities targeting
governance, development, security, and information,
aimed at making small, long-term, difficult-to-measure progress against ideology and conditions that
would make segments of the population vulnerable to
that ideology.
Any way one views it, the threat is still there. The
fact that the United States is, for now, pulling large
numbers of forces and significant formations from
the battlefield does not diminish that broader reality.
However, in a paradigm in which low-cost, small-foot-
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CHAPTER 21
ADJUSTING THE PARADIGM:
HUMAN SECURITY AS A STRATEGIC
APPROACH
TOWARD STABILITY, COUNTERTERRORISM,
AND MILITARY EFFECTIVENESS
Andrew Gallo and Cindy Jebb
This work reflects the views of the authors and not the views of
the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the U.S. Army,
or West Point. The authors would like to thank several scholars
in the Department of Social Sciences to include the Combating
Terrorism Center, especially Michael Meese, Reid Sawyer, Liam
Collins, Nelly Lahoud, Arie Perliger, Gabe Koehler-Derrick,
Alex Gallo, and Don Rassler, as well as P. H. Liotta, Angelica
Martinez, Assaf Moghadam, and Mark Crow. All have discussed
portions of this chapter especially as Cindy Jebb prepared several speeches and talks regarding this topic. This chapter builds
from and contains major portions of Jebb and Gallo, Adjusting the Paradigm: A Human Security Framework for Combating Terrorism, Chap. 16, Mary Martin and Taylor Owen,
eds., Handbook of Human Security, New York: Routledge Press,
2013, pp. 210-222.
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the Mayaguez to Grenada, Panama, Somalia, the Balkans, Haiti, Kuwait, Iraq, and morewe had no idea a
year before any of these missions that we would be so
engaged.1
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their daily lives. For many of them, security symbolized protection from the threat of disease, hunger,
unemployment, crime [or terrorism], social conflict,
political repression and environmental hazards. With
the dark shadows of the Cold War receding, one can
see that many conflicts are within nations rather than
between nations.12
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Identify Opportunities.
The human security approach highlights the economic, political, religious, and societal landscape to
include informal leaders. This process leads to empowering local stakeholders, to include women.
Collaboratively Determine Achievable Outcomes.
While achieving national interests, the United
States and the international community must view
outcomes empathetically and in partnership with local
stakeholders. In other words, there must be an empathetic understanding of the sources of legitimacy and
the varied levels of state effectiveness. It is too easy to
impose our own views on such matters. Moreover, as
the security environment changes, we must be willing
to reassess outcomes.
Acknowledge that Assessments Are Hard.
Assessments are critical, but we must also acknowledge their difficulty. Quantitative assessments
do not adequately describe progress, given the nonlinear nature of complex situations; at worst, reliance
on the wrong quantitative indicator can serve to incentivize behavior that worsens the problem at hand.
It is important that assessment criteria be established
collaboratively to establish partnerships among local
stakeholders more firmly to best achieve both legitimacy and effectiveness.
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Let us revisit the concept of strategic thinking introduced earlier. In a recent Foreign Affairs piece, General (Ret.) Stanley McChrystal observed:
In Iraq, when we first started, the question was,
Where is the enemy? . . . As we got smarter, we started to ask, Who is the enemy? . . . And then . . . we
asked, Whats the enemy doing or trying to do? And
it wasnt until we got further along that we said, Why
are they the enemy?32
6. Gregory D. Foster, Teaching Strategic Thinking to Strategic Leaders, The World & I Online, November 2005, online edition. Also see Gregory D. Foster, Research, Writing, and the
Mind of the Strategist, Joint Forces Quarterly, Spring 1996.
7. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have wound down as
of this writing; however, the authors acknowledge that changes in
these two areas may slow or reverse this process.
8. For a full discussion on the definition of terrorism, see Cindy R. Jebb, P. H. Liotta, Thomas Sherlock, and Ruth Beitler, The
Fight for Legitimacy: Democracy vs. Terrorism, Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2006, pp. 3-5.
9. See Ibid., pp. 3-7, for a discussion on perceptions and definitions of terrorism. Bruce Hoffmans definition is from Bruce
Hoffman, Lecture at West Point, April 2004; the Princeton Project
reference comes from G. John Ikenberry and Anne-Marie Slaughter, Forging a World of Liberty under Law: U.S. National Security in
the 21st Century, Princeton, NJ: The Woodrow Wilson School of
Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, September
27, 2006, p. 9.
10. Note that this section is modified from Cindy R. Jebb, Laurel J. Hummel, Luis Rios, and Madelfia Abb, Human and Environmental Security in the Sahel: A Modest Strategy for Success,
P. H. Liotta et. al., Environmental Change and Human Security, The
Netherlands: Springer Books, 2008, pp. 343-353.
11. Part One: Towards a New Security Consensus, Report
of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change to the Secretary General, New York: United Nations, p. 17, available from
unrol.org/files/gaA.59.565_En.pdf. as cited in Jebb et al., Human
and Environmental Security, p. 346.
12. United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Report,
1994, pp. 3, 22-23, as quoted by P. H. Liotta, The Uncertain Certainty, Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2004, pp. 4-5.
13. The UNDP lists the following categories of insecurity:
economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community,
and political. UNDP, UN Development Report, Chap. 2, New
Dimensions of Human Security, pp. 22-25 as cited in P. H. Liotta
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and Taylor Owen, Sense and Symbolism: Europe Takes on Human Security, Parameters, Vol. 36, No. 3, Autumn 2006, p. 90.
14. Also see Tedd Gurr, Why Minorities Rebel: Explaining
Ethnopolitical Protest and Rebellion, Minorities and Risk: A Global
View of Ethnopolitical Conflicts, Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, October 1997, pp. 123-138; and Robert Kaplan,
The Coming Anarchy, The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 273, Issue 2,
February 1994, pp. 44-76.
15. Jebb et al., The Fight for Legitimacy, p. 6.
16. Ralf Dahrendorf, On the Governability of Democracies,
Roy C. Macridis and Bernard Brown, eds., Comparative Politics:
Notes and Readings, Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing
Company, 1990, pp. 285-286. Also see Jebb et al., The Fight for
Legitimacy, p. 7.
17. Tony Blair, Doctrine of the International Community,
Speech delivered to the Chicago Economic Club, April 22, 1999.
18. David Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency Redux, Small Wars
Journal, available from www.smallwarsjournal.com/documents/
kilcullen1.pdf.
19. David Kilcullen addresses the many differences between
the classical insurgent and the modern insurgent, calling attention to the complex conflict eco-system that harbours numerous
insurgent groups. See Kilcullen, p. 9-10.
20. This notion of security was discussed by P. H. Liotta in a
presentation at West Point, NY, January 11, 2011.
21. For more on this case, see Cindy R. Jebb, The Fight for
Legitimacy: Liberal Democracy Versus Terrorism, The Journal of
Conflict Studies, Vol. XXIII, No. 1, Spring 2003, pp. 126-152.
22. Al-Qaidas Five Aspects of Power, Combating Terrorism Center, CTC Sentinel, Vol. 2, No. 1, January 2009, p. 1.
23. David H. Petraeus, Learning Counterinsurgency: Observations from Soldiering in Iraq, Military Review, JanuaryFebruary 2006, p. 4.
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CHAPTER 22
LANDPOWER IN THE CYBER DOMAIN
Suzanne C. Nielsen
The views expressed in this chapter are those of the
author and do not purport to reflect the position of the
United States Military Academy, the Department of
the Army, or the Department of Defense.
As this volume goes to press, the author notes that
Secretary of the Army John McHugh approved the
creation of a Cyber Branch within the Army on September 1, 2014. This chapter, which was written prior
to this development, remains useful to thinking about
the desirable characteristics of this branch and the
supporting changes within the Army that are needed
if this innovation is to succeed.
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The dependence of modern societies on a cyberspace that is fundamentally insecure constitutes a significant transformation in the strategic environment
in which the United States advances and protects its
national interests. To date, however, the U.S. Government and private sector have barely begun to grapple
with the full implications of this transformation. One
could find fault with individual leaders or organizations across the public and private sectors for a slow
rate of progress, but it is useful to recognize the inherent difficulties involved.
Since a full enumeration of the difficulties in securing cyberspace would require more space than is
appropriate here, this section will describe just three
examples for illustrative purposes. First, cyberspace is
relatively unique in that internationally-agreed upon
protocols allow users to operate as if international
borders did not exist. Geography is not completely
irrelevant, since sovereignty can still be exerted over
cyber infrastructure that is physically located within
a particular country. Nevertheless, borders are much
less salient for a variety of reasons, including the insignificance of physical distance; the speed at which
cyberspace operates; and the difficulty of attributing a
cyber activity to the responsible actor. Second, cyberspace is intrinsically a multi-stakeholder domain in
which private sector actors play a leading role. In the
United States, for example, the private sector builds
most cyberspace resources, owns and operates cyber
infrastructure, and provides the vast majority of the essential services upon which the functioning of society
relies. As they conduct these activities, private sector
entities respond to market incentives; in the aggregate,
their activities may not produce a level of risk that is
acceptable to society as a whole. Government actions
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to address this situation through regulations or the establishment of standards are highly contentious and
politically charged. As a third issue, tradeoffs between
security and the privacy and civil liberties of individual citizens seem stark, which complicates efforts by
the U.S. Government to improve cyber security. It is
undoubtedly possible to improve cyber security while
simultaneously protecting civil liberties and privacy,
but technical complexity increases the difficulty of explaining such initiatives. In addition, it is likely that
many Americans do not fully understand the risks to
their welfare and privacy that exist in the status quo,
which leads to weak public support for new policies.
THE ARMYS NEEDED CONTRIBUTION
TO INTERAGENCY CHANGE
Efforts to advance and protect U.S. national interests in this new strategic environment are not primarily the responsibility of the Department of Defense
(DoD), but DoD and the military services have a role
to play. The relatively borderless nature of cyberspace poses a challenge, given that U.S. laws and the
structure of the government were developed to deal
with a world in which distinctions between foreign
and domestic were clear, relevant, and useful. To
mitigate the risks that dependence on cyberspace creates, departments and agencies will have to leverage
their unique authorities while engaged in an intense
form of operational collaboration that does not come
naturally.
To see why strong interagency partnerships are
necessary, consider a scenario in which an adversary
state actor uses foreign and domestic cyber infrastructure to disrupt the operations of critical infrastructure.
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that are appropriate to them as well as threats.10 Several scholars, to include Elizabeth Kier in her study
of armies in the interwar period and Andrew Krepinevich in his study of the U.S. Army in Vietnam, have
argued that organizational culture can make armies
resistant to change.11 It should be noted that organizational culture need not always operate in this manner.
Military historian Williamson Murray, for example,
argues that the German Army in the interwar period
had a culture of critical examination that was conducive to learning and to change.12 However, these
three scholars are likely to agree that organizational
culture matters and should be examined for the likely
impediments or impetus to change that it creates.
While Wilson may be right that there is no single,
general theory capable of accounting for change in
government bureaucracies, the literature surveyed
does suggest some useful questions:
Do senior leaders within the Army embrace the
need to develop cyber forces and to integrate
cyber capabilities across the force?
Is there a new career pathway for specialists in
military cyberspace operations?
Is there a single organizational entity responsible for ensuring an integrated approach to
cyber force development?
How does Army culture create opportunities
or obstacles to the development of cyber forces
and the integration of cyber capabilities across
the force?
At this point, answers to these questions are preliminary since the development of cyber forces within
the U.S. armed forces is in its early stages. Nevertheless, attempting to answer these questions is useful in
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assessing the Armys progress to date as well as prospects for future change.
CHALLENGES ASSOCIATED WITH
CREATING CYBER CAPABILITIES
IN THE MILITARY SERVICES
Before addressing these questions, however, there
are four aspects of military cyberspace operations that
should be discussed since they shape the context and
impetus for change. First, due to the highly classified
nature of threat activity, a general lack of experience
with the consequences of adversary action, and a
broad unfamiliarity with the range of potential effects
that cyber forces can produce, there is lingering uncertainty about both the necessity to change and the
potential value added of cyber forces.
Second, it should be acknowledged that the development of cyber forces must contend with service
perspectives about core tasks. As mentioned, DoD
is currently approaching cyberspace operations as a
joint activity. This may facilitate progress; Army cyber forces may have a natural advantage in providing
support to ground force commanders due to familiarity with their needs, and the same may also be true
of the other services. However, the fact that military
cyberspace operations are joint also means that no
service views cyberspace operations as a core task.
Instead, cyberspace operations may be viewed as an
add-on, and potentially a draw on resources better devoted to capabilities at the center of a services view of
its contribution to the joint force. Cyber forces are not
carrier task forces to the Navy, advanced fighters to
the Air Force, or brigade combat teams to the Army.
In an environment that is fiscally constrained, this
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PART IV:
HUMAN CAPITAL
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CHAPTER 23
THE HUMAN DOMAIN:
LEADER DEVELOPMENT
Nadia Schadlow
Todays complex world creates an environment that
requires much more of our leaders. It is not enough
to be technically and tactically proficient. We must be
able to assess, understand, adapt, and yet still be decisive. We have to think through complex multidimensional problems, taking into account the diplomatic,
economic, military, political, and cultural implications
of every action. And we have to do all of this in an
age of instantaneous global communication, an age
in which the flow of information and its influence on
the local and global audience is often just as important as military action in determining the outcome of
operations.
General Raymond Odierno1
In Afghanistan and Iraq, some of the earliest lessons were that the consolidation of combat victories
required an understanding of the human domain of
the contested landscape in which U.S. troops were operating. Accounts of the wars, from soldiers to general
officers, stressed that U.S. planning and preparation
had not taken physical, cultural, and social environments adequately into account. The concept of the human domain seeks to account for these factors, and in
so doing to connect tactical and operational battlefield
actions to desired strategic outcomes.2 It also helps to
guide leader development, as the U.S. Army forms officers capable of operating in the contested political,
economic, cultural, and social environments that 21st
century warfare entails.
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Response Force. In addition the Army will align divisions to U.S. Southern Command, U.S. Northern
Command, U.S. European Command, and U.S. Africa
Command and will later align brigades to support
theater requirements. Of significance vis--vis these
regional alignments is that in the past, although the
Army aligned Corps and even brigades to certain areas, they did so for operational war plans and not for
shaping operations during peacetime.
These efforts reflect dual acknowledgement of the
importance of how local and regional political and
cultural factors will shape U.S. outcomes and the importance of prioritizing leader development topics for
mission accomplishment. Regionally aligned forces
will require soldiers to study, in detail, the places
they are likely to deploy to, which, according to commander of the Armys Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) General Robert Cone, must be an
intellectual commitment. Moreover, there will tactical andoperational benefits: in preparing for regional
deployments, units will begin experimenting with the
right mix of cultural, language, andtacticaltraining
during the pre-deployment period. Soldiers will develop a greater appreciation forworking with foreign
militariesand developing capabilitiesthat may be required in future conflicts; officers will develop a better
appreciation for drivers of instability in regions and
how (and how not) to build capabilities and capacity
with partnered units.
At the tactical and operational levels, the human
domain concept is being advanced through two important areas of training and education which have
been directly informed by experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan: mission command and wide area security
operations. First, the political, cultural, and social is-
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sues that comprise the human domain are being introduced through the U.S. Armys broader focus on
mission command. Mission command is the U.S. militarys principle of empowering junior officers to exercise independent judgment in the absence of real-time
guidance from above. In Iraq and Afghanistan, enormous decisionmaking authorities devolved to lower
levels and the current effort to advance mission command seeks to inculcate this reality of modern combat.
Mission command comprises more than the human domain, but it is through the mission command
concept that issues related to this domain are being
brought to soldiers attention. With the new awareness
of the human domain, mission command now encourages leaders at all levels to understand the principle
of influencing people in the local area as well as winning kinetic battles. Contemporary discussions about
mission command identify the requirement that the
commander must understand the problem, envision
the end state, and visualize the nature and design of
the operation.7
Success will require an understanding of the political, social, and cultural environment in which a unit
operates. Throughout the recent wars, small units
conducted decentralized operations across wide areas. Operations, led by young officers, involved continuous interactions between friendly forces, enemy
organizations, and civilians. Small units were directly
affected by the need to plan for and operate among
the reconstruction requirements of local populations.
Since each engagement with the enemy carried political, social, and cultural consequences, soldiers at the
tactical level had to deal with local politics.8 While
there are ongoing debates about the nature of future
war and the degree to which it will involve protracted
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on the ground deployments, most engagements involving U.S. Army troops will require the skills associated with mission command and the human domain.
Wide area security is a core operational concept
through which the human domain idea is also being
introduced to Army leaders. The 2009 Army Capstone
Concept, the more recent 2012 Capstone document,
and Army Doctrine Publication (ADP) 3-0, Unified Land
Operations, articulate the wide area security concept.
Wide area security is the ability to deny the enemy
positions of advantage, to consolidate gains and to
protect populations, forces, activities and infrastructure in an area of operations. It involves the ability
to respond to the evolving character of a conflict by
developing the situation through action and by continuously assessing of tactical, operational, strategic,
and political contexts in order to defeat the enemy
and support allies. Years of fighting in Afghanistan
and Iraq highlighted the need for military forces to
defeat identifiable enemy forces and to establish area
security over wide areas of operations to facilitate the
wide range of activities necessary to achieve political objectives.9 While future contingencies may look
different than those that unfolded during the recent
wars, wide area security recognizes that solders must
operate through the full spectrum of war and that conflict is not linearit requires attention to the human
domain as well as combat throughout an operation.
This requires organizations, soldiers, and leaders who
can understand and adapt to the complexity and uncertainty of future armed conflict.10
The challenge of training and education is to balance instruction in the enduring features of war with
the modern changes to its character. Carl von Clausewitz captured this point elegantly when he wrote,
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social or cultural. An absence of the word politics from discussions about the human domain suggests that knowledge about political relationships and
tensions and objectives in a particular region would
not be a core part of leader development. This would
be shortsighted. Leader development programs related to the human domain must, necessarily, focus
on preparing soldiers for the political considerations
that they will face in any deployment to any theater
around the world.
Second, to operate more effectively in the land
domain while fully accounting for the human aspects
of conflict and war, the Army requires an additional
warfighting function. Currently, it has six warfighting
functions: mission command, movement and maneuver, intelligence, fires, sustainment, and protection. A
warfighting function is a group of tasks and systems
(people, organizations, information, and processes)
united by a common purpose that commanders use
to accomplish missions and training objectives. Army
forces use the warfighting functions to generate combat power. All warfighting functions possess scalable
capabilities to mass lethal and nonlethal effects. The
Armys warfighting functions link directly to the joint
functions.13
A seventh warfighting function would capture the
tasks and systems that provide the lethal and nonlethal capabilities to assess, shape, deter, and influence
the decisions and behavior of a people, its security
forces, and its government. Such a function would
provide the foundation for training, education, and
leader development in the human domain area and
would help to institutionalize the human domain concept.14 Army leaders have debated the idea of adding a
seventh warfighting function since (at least) the spring
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439
3. Major General Peter W. Chiarelli and Major Patrick R. Michaelis, Winning the Peace: The Requirement for Full Spectrum
Operations, Military Review, July-August 2005, p. 4.
4. See Strategic Landpower Task Force paper.
5. Ibid.
6. See Toward Strategic Land Power, Army, July 2013,
pp. 20-23.
7. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin
Dempsey, Mission Command White Paper, April 2012, p. 4, available from www.jcs.mil/content/files/2012-04/042312114128_CJCS_
Mission_Command_White_Paper_2012_a.pdf.
8. See TRADOC Pamphlet 525-3-0, Army Capstone Concept 2009,
Washington, DC: U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command,
for discussion of this. See also Brigadier General Herbert McMaster, Centralization vs. Decentralization: Preparing for and Practicing Mission Command in Counterinsurgency Operations,
Lessons for a Long War: How America can Win on New Battlefields,
Thomas Donnelly and Frederick Kagan, eds., Washington, DC:
American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Press, May 2010, pp. 64-92.
9. Ibid., p. 13.
10. TRADOC Pamphlet 525-3-0.
11. Carl von Clausewitz, Michael Howard and Peter Paret,
eds. and trans., On War, Book VI, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976, pp. 45-46.
12. Colonel Doug Crissman, Improving the Leader Development Experience in US Army Units, Military Review, May-June
2013, p. 7.
13. These descriptions are in Army Doctrine Reference Publication (ADRP) 3-0, Unified Land Operations, Washington, DC:
Department of the Army HQ, May 2012, p. 3-2, available from
armypubs.army.mil/doctrine/DR_pubs/dr_a/pdf/adrp3_0.pdf.
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14. See Army Capstone Concept, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Army, December 2012. While this concept was discussed in that document, most recent discussions and debates (as
of the summer of 2013) may be downplaying the seventh warfighting function idea.
15. Chap. 3, available from armypubs.army.mil/doctrine/
ADRP_1.html.
16. Cleveland, p. 23.
17. Army Strategic Planning Guidance, Washington, DC: U.S.
Department of the Army, 2013, available from usarmy.vo.llnwd.
net/e2/rv5_downloads/info/references/army_strategic_planning_
guidance.pdf.
18. Major William D. Linn, II, Officer Development: A Contemporary Roadmap, Ft. Leavenworth, KS: School of Advanced Military
Studies, Academic Year 2008, available from www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/
GetTRDoc?AD=ada485472.
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CHAPTER 24
FROM SWORDS TO PLOUGHSHARES:
VETERANS AFFAIRS AND U.S.
GRAND STRATEGY
Daniel M. Gade
For its Tommy this, an Tommy that, an Chuck him
out, the brute!
But its Saviour of is country when the guns begin
to shoot;
An its Tommy this, an Tommy that, an anything
you please;
An Tommy aint a bloomin foolyou bet that Tommy sees!
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CHAPTER 25
CONCLUSIONS
Joseph Da Silva and Cindy Jebb
Perhaps the Army is a hammer, but that hammer does
not just drive nails to destroy but also to build.
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the force structure and human capital that it will require. There is consensus on several key points. First,
the Chief of Staff of the Army provides an important
starting point with his articulation of a prevent, shape,
and win strategic framework supported by a regionally aligned force. Second, there is consensus that we
cannot lose the hard-fought lessons of the past decadeplus of war. Of course, the challenge of capitalizing on
lessons learned is understanding which lessons ought
to be brought forward and which lessons are unique
to a particular set of circumstances. Third, we have
to approach the uncertain future with humility while
thinking strategically. At the very least, we have to
think through all phases to include winning the peace.
This imperative translates to working jointly at the
lowest levels but also continuing our partnering with
whole-of-government and society (nongovernmental
organizations, international governmental organizations, and local government). All are required to deter,
attack, defend, and win the peace; in all of these functions, the Army plays a prominent role.5
When the Army shifted its focus during the postVietnam era to the Soviet threat, it lost its institutional
memory of counterinsurgency and other forms of
warfare. The Army also did not pay attention to developments in other parts of the world, where second
and third order effects are now just being realized. For
example, our support of the mujahedeen in the 1980s,
with the aim of fighting the Soviets, helped to globalize a radical form of Islamic insurgency. Moreover,
what were once thought to be nontraditional threats
cannot now be ignored by serious strategists: climate
change, disease, refugee flows, land scarcity, and
terrorism. Each represents a vulnerability that can
expand from states to regions and from regional to
global proportions.
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The Armys strategic posture must be nested within the nations grand strategy and should focus on
other states, as well as nonstate actors. Nevertheless,
by focusing on Asia, the Persian Gulf, and Europe, the
United States may miss emerging threats elsewhere.
With the diffusion of technology and the rise of nonstate actors, the nation may leave itself vulnerable if
it does not help to shape dynamics and conditions in
other parts of the world before they become direct
threats. Even as the United States prepares for potential state rivals in the Pacific, U.S. leaders must consider how their actions may be perceived by their allies
and adversaries since what they consider defensive in
nature may inadvertently signal offensive intentions.6
ACKNOWLEDGING ASSUMPTIONS
As the Armys understanding of its role in U.S.
grand strategy advances, it is important to identify
sources of bias. Highlighting the assumptions one uses
to develop theory, strategy, and policy helps one to
understand differing perspectives and lays the foundation for rigorous study and testing of competing
ideas. The job of military professionals is to provide
sound military advice grounded in time-tested facts
and challenged assumptions. When unchallenged assumptions structure strategic debate, military professionals should be the first to question them.
Let us consider four assumptions rightly recognized in contemporary debates, to include the preceding chapters, over U.S. Landpower and grand
strategy:7
1. The United States will not fight any wars in the
near future.
2. If the United States is forced to fight a war, it can
rely on its technological comparative advantage.
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3. Given that budget constraints will force reductions in military spending and that these reductions
entail acceptance of some strategic risk, it is safer to
accept risk by greatly reducing the size of the Army
rather than other services.
4. The United States will avoid conflicts similar to
Afghanistan and Iraq by building the Army to fight
only conventional, rather than unconventional, wars
to prevent future policymakers from repeating their
predecessors mistakes.
As each of these claims is influential but unproven,
it is important to examine them critically. We will discuss each in turn.
Assumption #1: The United States will not fight
wars in the near future.
The first assumption is not always publicly stated,
but it can be inferred by the roles and missions assigned to the component forces. The budgetary process, consisting of an iterative exchange between Congress and the Department of Defense, determines the
size and shape of the Army.8 As of this writing, the
most recent budget has decided that end strength (or
total manpower) for the Army will be 450,000 by Fiscal Year (FY)2015, from a high of 560,000 in FY2012.
Without a clear and articulate narrative for Landpower in the 21st century, this end strength seems likely
to continue to decrease, leaving the nation exposed to
considerable risk in the event of another war.9
There seem to be two primary drivers for the assumption that the United States will not fight wars in
the near future: war-weary public sentiment and the
belief that whatever conflicts the United States en-
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As we move into the future, technology will continue to play a large part in providing for our security
as a means to accomplish strategic ends; however,
technology alone does not win wars. Certainly, technology can augment other elements of American powerincluding Landpower. Simple faith in advanced
technology, combined with the hope that war will not
recur soon, risks U.S. national security.
Assumption #3: Reducing the size of the Army
quickly saves cost with minimal risk.
The third assumption rests on the idea that it takes
much longer to build a Navy than it does an Army. If
this were so, downsizing the Army would be an acceptable risk if, in fact, we could quickly raise an educated, well-trained, and disciplined Army. It is true
that it takes a considerable amount of time to build a
naval ship5 years, for instance, in the case of a Virginia-class nuclear powered submarine. It is also true
that during World War I and World War II, the United
States put millions in uniform in a short time. It seems
easier to build an Army than to construct a Navy; as
a result, the case for a large Navy rather than a large
Army seems strong.16
This argument is misleading, however. An army
that is well-trained and effective takes as much time
to build as a strong navymore, in certain cases. The
preceding narrative of the U.S. experience in major
wars fails to note the performance of the U.S. Army
in the opening battles of these major conflicts. History was not kind to these armies. From the experiences of the American Expeditionary Forces in the
opening days of World War I, to the battle of Kasserine Pass in World War II, or the failed and infamous
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and mission focus, and, of course, questionable domestic will for the commitment of troops in foreign
interventions. The Army now finds itself once again
challenged in terms of its relevance, size, shape, and
ultimately the future of its organizational DNA. While
these challenges seem historically cyclical, the security
environment, fiscal, and bureaucratic realities today
call for fresh thinking as well.
How has the U.S. Army responded to previous periods of budget austerity? By and large, it has focused
on investments in human capital, on the understanding that well-trained and educated leaders would
ensure appropriate and prudent transitions once austerity ended and budgets increased.23 The Army has
also tried to maintain expansibility while distributing
resources equally among its commands, as seen in
the interwar period between World Wars I and II.24
Insofar as these policies have succeeded previously,
perhaps they can help to guide todays Army leaders.
Nevertheless, todays situation presents new challenges. The Army seems to be competing with more
groups than ever before for dominance over expertise
in the land domain. In the past, the Army competed
with the Marines over various mission sets, but today
the National Guard (Guard) and Special Operations
Command (SOCOM) present new competition. SOCOM has come to challenge the Army for functions
such as training foreign militaries and even some direct action missions. In addition, the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan have forced greater use of the Guard and
Reserve. Today, the Guard advocates for its budget
apart from the regular Army; the Guards preferences
are at times at odds with Army estimates, ideas, and
force structures. New understandings and cooperative agreements must be developed going forward to
make this relationship among the Army, Guard, Re467
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from www.nytimes.com/2012/05/28/world/at-west-point-asking-if-awar-doctrine-was-worth-it.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
19. William E. DePuy, Selected Paper of William E. DePuy, compiled by Richard M. Swain, Donald L. Gilmore and Carolyn D.
Conway, eds., Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute,
U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1994, p. 373.
20. Donald B. Vought, Preparing for the wrong war? Military Review, Vol. 57, No. 5, May 1977, pp. 1934.
21. Conrad C. Crane, Avoiding Vietnam: The U.S. Armys Response to Defeat in Southeastern Asia, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies
Institute, U.S. Army War College, September 2002, p. 2.
22. Edward J. Drea, In the Service of the Emperor: Essays on the
Imperial Japanese Army, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press,
1998, p. 13.
23. See Conrad Crane, Maintaining and Modernizing the
Force in Periods of Reduced Resources, Chap. 9 in this volume.
24. See Michael Meese, The Army in Times of Austerity,
Chap. 10 in this volume.
25. For the tension between bureaucratic and professional
identities, see Don M. Snider, Once Again, the Challenge to the U.S.
Army During a Defense Reduction: To Remain a Military Profession,
Vol 4, Professional Military Ethics Monograph Series, Carlisle,
PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, and Center for the Army Professional Ethic, February 2012, p. 1.
26. For a full discussion of human capital and the role of accession, development, employment, and retention in talent management, see Casey Wardynski, David Lyle, and Michael Colarusso,
Towards a U.S. Army Officer Corps Strategy for Success: A Proposed
Human Capital Model Focused Upon Talent, Carlisle, PA: Strategic
Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2010.
27. Frederick M. Franks, Jr., Address to MX 400: Officership, West Point, NY: U.S. Military Academy, August 27, 2013.
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