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Jim
Webb Reviews:
THE NEW AMERICAN MILITARISM:
How Americans Are Seduced by War
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Wall Street Journal
Articles:
Commentary:
A New
Doctrine for New Wars
November
30, 2001
For more than a decade, our military has been
conducting its world-wide activities without a clearly articulated doctrine
that would dictate the size and makeup of its forces and the acceptable uses
to which they would be put. So long as the Soviet Union remained a threat,
this glaring omission could be overlooked, since the military was sized and
positioned in a way that could allow it to adapt to lesser contingencies.
The buildup in the Gulf War was a direct product of this Cold War
positioning, as many of the units deployed to Saudi Arabia were shifted from
Europe.
Post-Cold War policies dramatically reduced the
size of the military, even as debates continued regarding its missions.
Lacking a traditional "threat" around which to build military forces,
defense officials had great difficulty justifying the size and functions of
the military to Congress and the media.
The recent focus on international terrorism
raises the prospect that traditional deterrence, both nuclear and
conventional, could be minimized in the public's eye. In order to ensure
that this does not happen, our leadership needs to articulate a clear
national strategy that addresses all our responsibilities.
As a starting point, it should be remembered
that an operational paradigm is not a strategic doctrine. The most egregious
misuse of this term in recent years has been its application to the
so-called Powell Doctrine, which called for the use of massive, overwhelming
force whenever the U.S. military was put into play. The Powell Doctrine was
little more than a "best-case scenario" for situations where the U.S. could
respond at its own discretion, using a schedule of its choosing, against an
enemy whose military makeup allowed such a response. But sometimes a nation
must fight even when it cannot muster up an overwhelming advantage, as in
the early days of World War II. And sometimes massive force is irrelevant,
as in the anti-terrorist campaigns we are waging today.
The most useful strategic doctrine in recent
decades was that announced by Richard Nixon in 1969. The Nixon Doctrine was
based on three broad principles -- that we would provide a nuclear deterrent
to hostile powers, that we would actively defend allies under external
attack, and that we would provide military equipment and other assistance to
friendly nations battling insurgents within their borders. The great
strength of the doctrine, which has not been fully superseded, was that it
allowed discretion regarding whether to enter direct combat, while assuring
friendly nations that we would not abandon them. Its principle weakness
today is that it did not take into account the evolution of asymmetrical
warfare, or the ability of terrorist movements to avoid direct affiliation
with any specific state sponsor.
As we look at shaping a comprehensive new
doctrine, two historic models come to mind. Both instruct us as to how we
can meet the responsibilities of maintaining global stability while
addressing the long-term need to directly combat asymmetrical movements such
as al Qaeda. And just as importantly, both also offer a clear warning
regarding the dangers of over-stretch if we ask too much of a military with
only 1.4 million active-duty members.
Americans tend to recoil from the word "empire,"
but the grand strategy of the British in the decades leading up to World War
I is a relevant precedent. Britain's diplomacy and strategy were based on a
desire to maintain world-wide stability and to protect its commercial
interests. Similarly, Britain was a dominant maritime power that made
minimum use of its own ground forces. In Asia, it counterbalanced the
maritime interests of other nations in part by developing an alliance with
Japan. Despite an empire that required a military presence in hot spots that
spanned the globe, at the start of World War I the British Army had only six
active divisions. The U.S. has 13 today, including the Marine Corps, with a
far wider spectrum of responsibilities than had the British a century ago.
In terms of how our military should operate with
nations and movements that share our ideology, we should remember the
successes of the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War period. Until their
invasion of Afghanistan, the Soviets relied on a strategy of "cooperative
forces," assisting insurgent armies around the world in their bid to
destabilize and demoralize the West. This involved supply and training, but
the Soviets themselves never found it necessary to field an army against the
Western powers. This surrogate approach was highly effective. It was a major
reason that the U.S. found itself involved in lengthy wars in Korea and
Vietnam, at a cost of more than 100,000 combat deaths, while the Soviets
themselves enjoyed a period of relative calm.
Both of these strategies met their demise in
wars that required sizable commitments of ground forces. The British
commitment in World War I eventually bled a generation dry, with a loss of
nearly a million soldiers, and empire died with them. The Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan sucked up a large percentage of its army, and in the end
demoralized the nation. Indeed, the war in Afghanistan may have contributed
to the demise of the USSR every bit as much as the U.S. approach of
outspending the Soviets on defense until they could no longer afford to
compete.
The key elements of a new doctrine seem obvious.
We must retain our position as the dominant guarantor of world-wide
stability through strategic and conventional forces that deter potentially
aggressive nations. We must be willing to retaliate fiercely against nations
that participate in or condone aggressive acts, as well as non-national
purveyors of asymmetric warfare. But we should take great care when it comes
to committing large numbers of ground forces to open-ended combat, and we
should especially avoid using them as long-term occupation troops.
The approach to our commitment in Afghanistan
fits the above criteria, and should serve as a clear warning to other states
that have condoned or supported terrorism. The Taliban were warned, and were
offered the chance to rid their country of Osama bin Laden's forces. Our
military campaign has been conducted with lethality, relying on mobile naval
and air assets and special forces units. The ground campaign has been
carried out principally through local forces. Marine Corps infantry units
were inserted at a time when the campaign's objectives had been clearly
focused, in order to perform specific tasks. And around the world, the U.S.
military is still carrying out its functions of maintaining global
stability.
This formula works, and as the campaign
stretches, we should not be tempted by its very successes to change it. If
we remain focused on the twin goals of deterring cross-border aggression and
eliminating international terrorism we will prevail. If we move beyond these
clear objectives, we risk running out of people, equipment, and the kind of
clarity that maintains the national spirit.
Basil Liddell Hart, who was gassed as a British
infantry captain in the trenches of World War I and became perhaps the
greatest strategist of the 20th century, put it best. "A conservative state
may defeat its own purpose by exhausting itself so much that it is unable to
resist other enemies, or the internal effects of overstrain. . . . Economy
of force and deterrent effect are best combined in the defensive-offensive
method, based on high mobility that carries the power of quick riposte."
James Webb was an
Assistant Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan
Administration.
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