Use and Capabilities of US Military Power in the 21st Century

In Myamoto Musashi’s classic “Book of Five Rings”, he points out that to win, a warrior must know his enemies strengths and weakness’s. He must also know his own strengths and weakness’s. If a warrior fails to know both of these things, he will lose. The United States usually goes into battle knowing our adversary’s strengths and weakness’s, and our own strengths. We do not, however, like to create a strategy which acknowledges our weakness. We must create a new strategic posture for the 21st Century which finds its inspiration in a full understanding of both our needs and our capabilities. Those capabilities include acknowledging the capacity of our national politics to sustain conflict operations in different types of conflict.

It is not yet a safe enough world for the US to dismantle its heavy military units and replace them with cheaper, lightly armed, counter-guerilla forces. Nor is it wise for the US to attempt using its traditional military structure as the primary tool in counter terrorism. We need a new force structure, and more importantly, a new engagement doctrine, designed to meet the new defense needs of the country.

At the end of the 20th century, the Bi-Polar world ended with the implosion of the former Soviet Union. The US defense strategy and posture had been dictated by this bipolar conflict between industrialized powers for the better part of half of a century. It has been widely recognized that the defense strategy and military posture of the United States needed to be changed to reflect this change in the defense needs of the country. Donald Rumsfeld became a leading advocate to make these dramatic changes in a process that came to be called “transformation”. This change would dictate future needs in terms of acquisition of weapon systems, maintenance of existing systems, personnel needs and training. It was thought that shifts in technology and needs would allow the US military to “do more, with less”, using technology as a force multiplier.

The “War on Terror”, the proxy name for what is actually a war against the global Jihadist movement, made manifest the military needs in the new century far sooner than most had expected. At this juncture, it is now apparent that an essential element of the new armed forces structure was neglected when the US military was transformed. In addition to the recognition of a new strategic doctrine, we also need to address a new “goals and use” doctrine to accompany the new forces. The Cold War model included at least a presumptive “goals and use” doctrine which defined the mission of the Department of Defense as a defensive force, to be used for both deterrent and as a reactive force to curtail Soviet territorial aggression. A successful strategic doctrine must have defined not only its means, but its goals and an acknowledgement of its limitations; to wit, a defined strategy on when and how to engage an enemy.

Col. Harry Summers, in his book, “On Strategy, a Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War”, pointed out that any military is designed to “kill people and break things”. The same is true of a “transformed” US military. In our war with the global Jihad, we are unlikely to often encounter the type of fixed defenses and large mobile formations that modern warfare has been designed to defeat. Our opponents have a more dispersed nature, and are consequently harder to fix and destroy.

It would be a grave mistake to fundamentally alter the nature of our armed forces to solely fight lightly armed terrorists, insurgents, and guerillas. Although they may comprise most of our enemies in the foreseeable future, and although they do present a sufficient threat to national security that the military should be tasked with participating in the struggle against them, they do not pose a lethal threat to our polity. A redesign of our armed forces to wholly task them with this form of low intensity conflict would leave us vulnerable to the true, lethal, threat to our polity, traditional combined arms warfare. Worse still, history has shown us that traditional military means, methods, and materials are remarkably ill suited for fighting against a committed guerilla war. Often the reasons for this poor showing are political rather than military. It has been argued that in fighting guerilla forces, the goal is more political and psychological than military; therefore it should be unsurprising that the military is a poor tool, rendering a less than satisfactory result. Military force should only be used to achieve a military goal. Civilian leadership can define when it is in the nation’s interest to kill certain person(s) and destroy certain targets, and the US military can absolutely achieve unqualified success if tasked within those parameters. However, the military cannot, and should not, be tasked with achieving such nebulous goals as “create a stable environment”, or “establish a new government”, or “make an area safe for democracy”.

During the coming century, in our war with the Jihadists, and possibly in other conflicts as well, we will be faced with the need to destroy certain regimes. This will be because either they are supporting terrorism by providing terror groups with resources, recruits, and refuge, or because they are developing weapon systems that pose a threat to our vital national interest. This could be a direct threat from that country or its intention to provide that capability to others who threaten us. In either case, it will prove necessary to both destroy such regimes, and better still, deter regimes from undertaking those actions at all. As we find ourselves compelled to topple regimes, we will be faced with Colin Powell’s proposed dilemma, “If you break it, you bought it”. The United States traditional military forces and doctrine historically do not fare well in attempting occupation, and it diminishes our strength, agility, and deterrent capabilities to attempt it. Occupation almost always provides the grounds and means for an insurgency to spring up.

It would be possible to go further than that, and say Liberal Democracy’s have a poor record at defeating insurgencies, because that form of warfare is contrary to our reason for being. Insurgencies inherently come from some form of occupation, and Liberal Democracies don’t do occupation. We can “peace keep” between rival factions or a restless population for a short period of time while a normal order reestablishes itself, but if that normal order is not a pre-existing condition, a free society cannot use force to impose order on a population, simply because we refuse to do it at home, and therefore it runs contrary to our national character. The British couldn’t do it forever in their far flung empire and India, the French couldn’t through their empire and Algeria, even the Israeli’s couldn’t in the neighboring territories or Lebanon, and we can’t. The only states that have a prayer of doing “occupation” are states that are totalitarian at home as well. Their polity and their domestic methods make it far easier to adopt an imperial model, since their domestic sensibilities are no different. It is merely an expansion of their borders over other geographic space.

Worse still, it seems that prolonged occupation duties actually diminish the war fighting capabilities of a modern army. This stems from the fact that occupation duties bear more resemblance to police work than the aggressive, fast moving, patterns necessary for victory on the modern battlefield. In essence, the lessons learned and ingrained are the wrong ones. The problems for our military in the next century will require a solution that allows the maintenance of a capable armed force, which utilizes means, methods and doctrines that comport with these realities on the ground in every part of the global theater of operations.

The best method for maintaining a position to achieve our varied goals and objectives would entail minor alteration in our present force structures but a great change in our engagement doctrine. We may be required to periodically use military force to “peace keep” after a hostile regime has been destroyed by our conventional military forces. In addition, we may be called upon to engage in “Peacekeeping” operations as part of a multinational force pursuant to treaty obligations. Neither of these tasks should be undertaken by our main military forces, either rapid deployment or heavy units, since these operations “blunt the spear”. The United States Army needs at least one, possibly two Division size units, specifically tasked as “Peacekeeping” or “Follow On” force. These units would be trained and equipped for operations other than total war. They would be heavy in Special Forces liaison, intelligence, engineer units, military police, Psychological Operations, and Civil Affairs personnel. Their equipment would likewise be tailored to the task at hand, with a greater emphasis placed on high mobility, lightly armored vehicles, such as the Stryker, and less resources devoted to such weapon systems as heavy armor, and artillery. They would retain those air capabilities which have proven effective in urban battlefields of this new era. These forces would be specialized in all the lessons we have learned in such places as the former Yugoslavia, Panama, Mogadishu and Baghdad.

The change in our engagement doctrine would be the most critical and decisive element in this position shift for the 21st century. We shall need to recognize that military force cannot always be used along the models created in the 20th century wars in Europe. In fact, the use of that model is deceptive due to the scale of those conflicts. Although the United States succeeded in fundamentally changing the nature of the Japanese culture and possibly the German one, this was due to the appalling level of destruction these societies had endured during the conflict. We now know enough about psychology and group psychology to understand that in all likelihood, these were entire populations who were almost hypnotically suggestible, in a state of collective shock. It is almost forgotten how complete the destruction was of both of these countries and the staggering percentage of the population that had been killed. If we wish to reshape a countries whole culture and polity, we must be prepared to completely destroy its society and civilization, before attempting to replace it with something of our choosing. We cannot simply replace its potentate. If a hostile regime needs to be excised, we cannot plan to build a European style democracy in its stead, nor can we simply let the toxic regime continue if we cannot imagine a European style democracy taking its place. In the 21st century, it is unlikely we will have the political will or moral conviction to so devastate our opponent. We must also acknowledge our own weakness that prevents us from being able to conduct long occupations. Therefore, we are left with the lesser of two evils. We must be willing to use our conventional forces to decapitate rogue regimes, and then leave the locals to sort out a new government. Our brief stay afterwards by one or both of our follow on Divisions should not be treated as occupation, or an unlimited commitment to rebuilding. Rather it should be seen as short window of opportunity for the locals to put together a replacement government, the success or failure of which is entirely up to them. Internally, we must acknowledge that their success or failure is of little consequence to us. This type of military action would resuscitate a practice similar to what was once called "Punitive Expeditions".

When faced with an intransigent insurgency, only the locals can sort out their own order in the long run. Consequently the US should not plan to stay any longer in a country we have toppled, than is necessary to stabilize the immediate aftermath when we create a power vacuum. The most advisable doctrine would be to pull out, yet leave them with the clear understanding that should the power that fills the vacuum antagonize us, it will soon go the way of the last one. We should shy away from long occupations, but we should not shy away from “repeated visitations” until even the most obtuse understand that if they want to stay in power, the one thing they absolutely cannot do is antagonize us.

By David Roth

Posted February 2, 2007 03:15 PM
Read more on Articles - David Roth ~ U.S. Armed Forces