Photo: Center for Earth Observation

National Defense Strategy

By Robert M. Gates
Foreign Affairs, January/February 2009

Edited by Andy Ross

The United States cannot expect to eliminate national security risks through higher defense budgets. The Department of Defense must set priorities.

To be seen to fail in either Iraq or Afghanistan would be a disastrous blow to U.S. credibility. In Iraq, the number of U.S. combat units there will decline over time, but there will continue to be some kind of U.S. advisory and counterterrorism effort in Iraq for years to come. In Afghanistan, U.S. troop levels are rising to meet an even more complex and difficult long-term challenge than Iraq.

What is dubbed the war on terror is a prolonged, worldwide struggle between the forces of violent extremism and those of moderation. Over the long term, the United States cannot kill or capture its way to victory: kinetic operations should be subordinated to measures aimed at promoting better governance, economic programs that spur development, and efforts to address the grievances among the discontented.

The United States is unlikely to repeat another forced regime change followed by nation building under fire anytime soon. But it may face similar challenges in a variety of locales. Where possible, U.S. strategy is to employ indirect approaches to prevent problems from turning into crises that require direct military intervention.

Threats to the U.S. homeland are more likely to emanate from failing states than from aggressor states. Terrorist networks can find sanctuary within the borders of a weak nation and strength within the chaos of social breakdown. A nuclear-armed state could collapse into chaos and criminality.

To attain a political objective, the United States needs a military whose ability to kick down the door is matched by its ability to clean up the mess and even rebuild the house afterward.

The military has made some impressive strides in recent years. Special operations have received steep increases in funding and personnel. The air force has created a new air advisory program and a new career track for unmanned aerial operations. The navy has set up a new expeditionary combat command and brought back its riverine units. New operations manuals and strategy have incorporated the lessons of recent years. And various initiatives are under way that will better integrate and coordinate U.S. military efforts with civilian agencies.

The United States still has to contend with the security challenges posed by the military forces of other countries. Both Russia and China have increased their defense spending and modernization programs. In addition, there is the potentially toxic mix of rogue nations, terrorist groups, and nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.

Potential adversaries have learned that it is unwise to confront the United States directly on conventional military terms. The United States cannot take its current dominance for granted and needs to invest in the programs, platforms, and personnel that will ensure that dominance's persistence.

In terms of tonnage, the U.S. Navy battle fleet is still larger than the next 13 navies combined, and 11 of those 13 navies are U.S. allies or partners. Russian tanks and artillery may have crushed Georgia's tiny military, but what is driving Russia is a desire to exorcise past humiliation and dominate its neighbors, not to dominate the globe. Russia's conventional military remains a shadow of its Soviet predecessor.

The 2008 National Defense Strategy concludes that U.S. predominance in conventional warfare is sustainable for the medium term given current trends. U.S. air and sea forces have ample untapped striking power should the need arise to deter or punish aggression.

Other nations may be unwilling to challenge the United States fighter to fighter, ship to ship, tank to tank. But they are developing the disruptive means to blunt the impact of U.S. power, narrow the United States' military options, and deny the U.S. military freedom of movement and action.

In the case of China, Beijing's investments in cyberwarfare, antisatellite warfare, antiaircraft and antiship weaponry, submarines, and ballistic missiles could threaten the United States' power in the Pacific. This will put a premium on the United States' ability to strike from over the horizon and employ missile defenses and will require shifts from short-range to longer-range systems.

The United States must maintain a credible strategic deterrent. The Department of Defense and the air force have taken firm steps to return excellence and accountability to nuclear stewardship. Congress needs to fund the Reliable Replacement Warhead Program.

The categories of warfare are blurring. Russia's offensive in Georgia was augmented with a sophisticated cyberattack and a well-coordinated propaganda campaign. The United States saw a different combination of tools during the invasion of Iraq, when Saddam Hussein dispatched paramilitary fighters along with T-72 tanks.

Militias, insurgent groups, other nonstate actors, and developing-world militaries are increasingly acquiring more technology, lethality, and sophistication. Chinese and Russian arms sales are putting advanced capabilities in the hands of more countries and groups.

When it comes to procurement, the trend has gone toward lower numbers as technology gains have made each system more capable. The dynamic of exchanging numbers for capability is perhaps reaching a point of diminishing returns. A given ship or aircraft, no matter how capable or well equipped, can be in only one place at one time.

Meanwhile, the prevailing view has been that weapons and units designed for the so-called high end could also be used for the low end. Strategic bombers designed to obliterate cities have been used as close air support for riflemen on horseback. M-1 tanks originally designed to plug the Fulda Gap during a Soviet attack on Western Europe routed Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah and Najaf. Billion-dollar ships are employed to track pirates and deliver humanitarian aid.

The time has come to consider whether specialized low-tech equipment for stability and counterinsurgency missions is also needed. It is time to institutionalize the procurement of such capabilities and get them fielded quickly.

The Defense Department has to consider whether in situations in which the United States has total air dominance, it makes sense to employ lower-cost, lower-tech aircraft that can be employed in large quantities and used by U.S. partners. The issue then becomes how to build this kind of innovative thinking and flexibility into rigid procurement processes.

The ability to fight and adapt to a diverse range of conflicts, sometimes simultaneously, fits squarely within the long history and the finest traditions of the American practice of arms.

In Iraq, the U.S. army over time became an effective instrument of counterinsurgency. But that transition came at a frightful human, financial, and political cost. For every heroic and resourceful innovation by troops and commanders on the battlefield, there was some institutional shortcoming at the Pentagon they had to overcome.

One of the enduring issues the military struggles with is whether personnel and promotions systems designed to reward the command of American troops will be able to reflect the importance of advising, training, and equipping foreign troops. Another is whether formations and units organized, trained, and equipped to destroy enemies can be adapted well enough and fast enough to dissuade them or to build the capacity of local security forces to do the dissuading and destroying.

As secretary of defense, I have repeatedly made the argument in favor of institutionalizing counterinsurgency skills and the ability to conduct stability and support operations. I have done so because conventional and strategic force modernization programs are already strongly supported in the services, in Congress, and by the defense industry.

For decades there has been no strong, deeply rooted constituency inside the Pentagon or elsewhere for institutionalizing the capabilities necessary to wage asymmetric or irregular conflict. The first Gulf War stands alone in over two generations of constant military engagement as a more or less traditional conventional conflict from beginning to end.

The United States is the strongest and greatest nation on earth, but there are still limits on what it can do. The power and global reach of its military have been an indispensable contributor to world peace and must remain so. But we should be modest about what military force can accomplish and what technology can accomplish.

War is inevitably tragic, inefficient, and uncertain, and it is important to be skeptical of systems analyses, computer models, game theories, or doctrines that suggest otherwise. We should look askance at idealistic, triumphalist, or ethnocentric notions of future conflict that aspire to transcend the immutable principles and ugly realities of war, that imagine it is possible to cow, shock, or awe an enemy into submission, instead of tracking enemies down hilltop by hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block.

I believe the United States' National Defense Strategy provides a balanced approach to preserving the United States' freedom, prosperity, and security in the years ahead.

Robert M. Gates is U.S. Secretary of Defense.
 

AR  This is a realistic assessment, which reassures me that Gates is the right man for the job.