McNair Paper 60, April 1999, The Revolution in Military Affairs: Allied Perspectives

2.

The American Approach to the RMA: A Baseline

 From the standpoint of both allies and competitors of the United States, there are three very different types of responses to the RMA.  Three variant strategies might well emerge¾  power denial, power assertion and affirmation, and power sharing.

For Third World states seeking to undercut American and allied power, selective use of the RMA to draw upon new technologies to disrupt power projection is a core strategy.  We might call this strategy the power denial strategy. 

For regional powers not allied with the United States and that aspire to a significant role in global politics, there is the possibility of a comprehensive incorporation of technologies in building robust regional power projection forces.  This may be used for power denial or a more ambitious agenda may be attempted¾ power assertion and affirmation but within a regional plus setting.  The clearest case of this is China. 

The third response is that of regional powers allied with the United States.  Here the relationship with the United States ensures the need to deal directly with American adaptations but to seek to define some autonomy of action vis-a-vis the United States.  This strategy might be identified as power sharing with the United States in shaping the new global order. 

This assessment examines two key European allied approaches¾  those of France and Germany¾  to the RMA.  It is the third strategy that therefore predominates in the analysis.  Coming to terms with the United States by Germany and France is a key part of the dynamics of change associated with the RMA. 

In this section, we provide a baseline from which to assess the attempt by regional allies to deal with the United States and its approach to the RMA.  To do so, we will use the analysis produced by the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) in the 1997 Strategic Assessment of the force structure options for the United States in the next 10 years.[i]

The INSS report argues that defense budget constraints will lead inevitably to downsizing of forces.  The question is how restructured forces will be shaped in relationship to new technological options.  How radical will the process of restructuring be in relationship to new technologies?  Should the United States pursue a cautious strategy of change, a robust strategy of change, or a something in between?  The first strategy is called "a recapitalized force," the second is referred to as "an accelerated RMA force," and the third is a "full spectrum force." 

Budget constraints and the changing nature of U.S. global presence provide the broad context within which redesign of the U.S. military will unfold.  But it is to the technological factor the report turns to make basic judgments about force structure changes.  According to the report, new technology has already presaged new operations and force-structure changes: 

Technological improvements in the late 1980s and early 1990s suggest the United States could dramatically improve the efficiency and effectiveness with which it can use military force. Three areas of military capability are of particular note:  

Everyone agrees that systems embodying these capabilities will enable U.S. troops to be more efficient in using military force.

There is, however, a contending view. Those who see the emerging technologies as offering more profound changes tend to argue that for the United States to take full advantage of the technological improvements, it will be necessary to alter the existing  structure and organization of the force. This group favors accelerating both the introduction of the technologies and making the structural, organizational, operational, and doctrinal changes that would take advantage of the technology as rapidly as possible.[ii]

 For regional allies, the debate about transformation of the U.S. military echoes within their own countries.  What is the proper mix between tradition and innovation?  Which technologies should be invested in and deployed?  What is the best approach to pursuing organizational innovation in the years ahead, in light of budgetary stringencies?    

The "system of systems" approach contains at its core a global integrator¾  the United States.  This means that no regional ally will be in the position to control the overall integration of the Euro-Atlantic-Asian military system.  If you cannot control the center of integration, what is the proper role for a regional ally?  Is it possible to balance independence and interdependence effectively in dealing with an American sponsored RMA?  What approaches would be most effective in protecting national and regional interests within your region?  How significant will the RMA be as a factor shaping the strategic environment within your region?

Notably, the export controls of the United States and the competition among services, as the jointness process proceeds in the restructuring of the U.S. military, will make it difficult for regional allies to get inside the core of the U.S. RMA process. 

In addition, there is the question of cost.  A recent report of the National Defense Panel argued for a significant investment by the U.S. in a military transformation strategy.[iii]  This would certainly be a wise and prudent move for the United States as it pursues organizational innovation.  The estimated budget "wedge" for this strategy was calculated at $5 to $10 billion dollars.  Such a wedge would hardly be a wedge for any regional partner of the United States, notably so in a period of economic restructuring, social unrest, and political reform.

The combination of budgetary dollars and military service competition within the United States creates another dimension of the regional ally problem.  Which variant of the RMA sponsored by which service will become predominant?  The National Defense Panel put the tension between jointness and service competition in particularly useful terms for our analyses:

Effecting a military transformation will require a much greater role for jointness. It may also encompass greater competition among the military services, not less. Congress and many military reformers have decried¾  in many cases, quite rightly¾  the amount of overlap and redundancy that exists among the four military services. However, competition among the services can assist in determining how best to exploit new capabilities or how to solve emerging challenges. This kind of competition should be encouraged. . . . What emerges from earlier periods of transformation, whether it be the development of naval aviation, or the exploitation of ballistic missiles, is that they take a considerable amount of time, at least a decade, and often closer to two, to play out. . . . Additional time is required to determine how best to employ the new military system, and to make the appropriate adjustments in the force structure. If that is the case, then senior Defense Department leaders must begin now to develop and execute a transformation strategy to prepare for the very different kinds of challenges they see confronting the armed forces over the long-term future.[iv]

 The INSS study also underscored that the accelerated RMA force would involve a number of changes in the integration of forces and in the roles of ground, naval and air components of the new and more integrated force structure: 

The system-of-systems integrates systems that collect, process, and communicate information with those that apply military force. Advocates believe that doing this can produce an enormous disparity in military capability between the United States and any opponent, a disparity that will enable U.S. military forces to operate within an opponent's reaction cycles and apply military force with dramatically greater efficiency and little risk to U.S. forces. The system-of-systems refers primarily to the technical basis of this argument and describes the capabilities that result from the interaction of new ISR, C4I, and precision force technologies.

 

There is an important corollary to the technical promises of the system-of-systems; namely, that to achieve the promise of the system-of systems technologies, the United States must develop new operational concepts and military organizations that can take advantage of them. In this view, the United States has to move away from a force structure that is too ponderous to operate within the decision-reaction cycle of an opponent, and it must adopt operational concepts that are consistent with the capabilities the technologies offer.[v]

 

The vision of an accelerated RMA sketched out in the report identifies implicitly the challenge for regional allies in dealing with its dynamic and disruptive partner:

 

The Accelerated RMA Force's more radical deviation from the 1996 military has a different rationale. The Accelerated RMA Force assumes that maintaining alliances would revolve around developing a symbiosis different from that which existed during the Cold War era. With regard to NATO, for example, Accelerated RMA Force advocates would argue that a U.S. military able to provide allies with dominant battlespace knowledge, and thus enable them to use their own forces more effectively, is more assuring in the new age of ambiguous threats than maintaining a force similar to the one built to defend Europe against aggression by a military superpower. In this view, continuity of form and function is less conducive to alliance maintenance than implementing new military capabilities that meet emerging interests, even if these new capabilities increase the disparity between U.S. forces and those of its allies. Advocates of the Accelerated RMA Force might take their cues from the earlier way in which the United States was able to forge its technical lead in nuclear weapons technology into an alliance-enhancing multiplier.

 

They would argue that, while the nuclear umbrella makes less sense in the absence of a superpower confrontation, technologies that help cut through international ambiguities and assist the application of force by allies are increasingly valuable as the bedrock of alliances and coalitions. And, just as the U.S. willingness to share the international utility of nuclear prowess reduced the perceived need by allies to develop their own nuclear weaponry or to try to match the arsenals of the super powers, so too could similar sharing arrangements with an advanced U.S. system-of-systems capability serve as a basis for maintaining existing alliances, build new coalitions, and shape the international environment of the future (without necessitating the costs of trying to match U.S. capabilities).

With regard to dissuading an attempt by a large power to match or surpass the military capability of the United States, advocates of the Accelerated RMA Force would argue it is best to increase the lead the U.S. has in RMA technologies and incorporate those technologies in a compatible force structure and operational doctrine rapidly. Doing so, they would argue, would make any effort to technically match the U.S. more difficult (at least until early into the twenty-first century), thus deterring efforts to match or counter U.S. capabilities because of the costs of trying to do so. Meanwhile, any growing suspicions could be alleviated by the concomitant reductions in force size and with new sharing mechanisms and stabilizing agreements.[vi]

What conclusions would a policy planner for a regional ally of the United States draw from the long lead time for implementation, the competition among the services to foster variant RMAs, and the disruption within military relations which the United States engendered by the organizational innovation of the RMA?  Where would emphasis be put?  How would a strategy for adaptation to the RMA be designed? How could one participate in an RMA with the United States without losing the capability to act outside of the American decisionmaking system, when necessary for one's own national interests?

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                                              Notes

[i].    Institute for National Strategic Studies, Strategic Assessment 1997: Flashpoints and Force Structure (Washington, DC: The National Defense University, 1997), chapter 21.

[ii].    Ibid.

[iii].   Transforming Defense: National Security in the 21st Century (Washington: National Defense Panel, 1997).

[iv].   Ibid., 58.

[v].    Strategic Assessment 1997.

[vi].   Ibid.