Clark A. Murdock, Ph.D.
President, Murdock Associates, Inc.

Senior Fellow, CSIS

The Emerging U.S. Defense Strategy: Are We Preparing

for the Global Era?

The conference organizers asked that the following issues be addressed in this paper:

How should our national security strategy factor in the implications of globalization? Does this process require a more adaptive military strategy and force posture?
What parts of current U.S. military strategy should be retained, and what new capabilities and responsibilities are needed considering the age of globalization?
The merits of multilateralism and unilateralism as they pertain to U.S. defense strategy in a global era.
Do we need a new joint strategy that combines peacetime strategic shaping, swift wartime power projection, and decisive strike operations?

This paper will address these questions by first addressing how globalization – defined as the “dynamic process of change characterized by the growing cross-border flows of trade, investments, finances, technology, ideas, cultures, values and people” – is affecting the emerging security environment and then analyze the resulting implications this has for U.S. national security and military strategy.[1] After then defining the U.S. power projection and presence capabilities needed to cope with the demands of an increasingly globalized security environment, the paper will address the relative merits of multilateralism and unilateralism with respect to U.S. defense strategy and then conclude by assessing how well, particularly in light of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld’s current experience in the soon-to-be-completed Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), the Defense Department is transforming itself to meet the challenges and threats of the Global Era. To the extent possible, this paper will build upon, rather than replicate, the many excellent articles that appeared in the National Defense University’s mammoth survey entitled The Global Century: Globalization and National Security, Volumes I and II, hereafter referred to as Global Century.

Globalization, the Future Security Environment and U.S. Defense Strategy

Globalization has both accelerated the pace and expanded the extent of global change, and is clearly having a polarizing effect on the international system. As Global Century observed, globalization both integrates and fragments as it creates a “bifurcated world” of economic haves and have-nots:

Globalization helps promote progress abroad by encouraging market capitalism, democracy, the free flow of information, and cooperative security affairs. But it can also contribute to economic dislocation, political turmoil, inflamed security rivalries, and even war.[2]

For Richard Kugler, globalization is dividing the world into two camps -- a globalization-enabled “democratic community” whose principal security challenge is controlling chaos in a globalization-challenged “outlying world” of fragmentation, seething conflict and violence.[3] Kugler argues further that the strategic imperative for the democratic community is to promote stability in the outlying world, both to prevent chaos from endangering the interests of the democratic community and to provide the necessary precondition for progress so that outliers can become globalized.

Although globalization certainly seems to have elevated the importance of economics as a cause of war, it has always been important. Harvard economist Jeffrey D. Sachs first noted that the CIA’s State Failure Task Force (established in 1994) confirmed “the importance of economic underpinnings to state failure” by identifying the three most important explanatory variables of the 113 cases of identified state failure:

“infant mortality rates, suggesting that overall low levels of material well-being are a significant contributor to state failure; openness of the economy, in that more economic linkages with the rest of the world diminish the chances of state failure; and democracy, with democratic countries showing less propensity to state failure than authoritarian regimes. The linkage democracy has another strong economic aspect, however, because other research has shown strongly that the probability of country being democratic rises significantly with its per capita income level.[4]

Jeffrey Sachs then discovered that the link between state failure and the use of U.S. military forces was quite direct: “If we compare the dates of U.S. military engagement with the timing of state failures according to the State Failure Task Force, we find that virtually every case of U.S. military intervention abroad since 1960 has taken place in a developing country that had previously experienced a case of state failure.”[5] If globalization produces more failed states, as most of the Global Conflict authors believe, the demand for U.S. military forces will likely increase.

Moreover, Global Century also concluded that globalization would bring increased conflict over resources, particularly energy and water, as many states unable to keep pace in the economic race would turn to other means for securing vital supplies. Most recently demonstrated in Iraq’s seizure of Kuwait in 1991, the notion of “war as armed robbery” was given fictional expression in Tom Clancy’s recent depiction of a foreign reserves-depleted China who, when frustrated by U.S. efforts to redress the Sino-American trade balance, invaded Russia in an effort to seize new oil and gold discoveries.[6] War used to be politics by other means; in the globalized era, it is becoming economics by other means.

The optimism of the early enthusiasts of globalization has faded considerably as the blowback against globalization has risen. Meetings of the International Monetary Fund have become ritualized, often violent, clashes between local security forces and a disparate array of groups and organizations joined only by their opposition to globalization. However, anti-globalization can often become anti-Americanism as the United States is widely perceived around the globe as the inventor of globalizations, its chief beneficiary, and, as the world’s only superpower and the “world’s policeman”, its principal enforcer. The anti-Americanism that flared throughout Asia in the wake of Asia’s economic collapse in 1997-8 is harbinger of things to come.[7] Disruptive change wrought by globalization will translate into more blowback on America. Homeland defense has become a security imperative.

Globalization may not only inspire more animus toward America; it will also enable them to express it more effectively through the increased proliferation of weapons technology. The consensus expressed in Global Century was firm: proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), particularly biological weapons, and their means of delivery is poised to accelerate; advanced conventional weapons, especially those suited for asymmetric use against U.S. power projection forces (e.g., anti-ship cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, diesel submarines, naval mines, etc.) will spread; and the threat of information warfare, to which the United States is “uniquely vulnerable” because of the joint nature of its military operations, is growing.[8] The very existence of the United States may no longer be at risk, as it was during the Cold War, but the number and types of risks facing Americans will grow.

So, if globalization is likely to increase both the demands on U.S. military forces and the threats to them, what about the supply side of the equation? Here too, the news is not good, because, as Tony Cordesman trenchantly argues, globalization also creates a “peacetime funding dynamic” that produces an “underfunded, underpaid and undersupported” force:

Perhaps the greatest single problem the United States faces in dealing with the global pressures described earlier is one of resources. Some studies indicate that the present U.S. force structure has been underfunded by some $100 billion and that the United States would need to spend roughly 4 percent of its GNP to adequately fund its current strategy and force goals. This percentage compared with planned spending of 2.9 percent in fiscal year 2000, which will drop to 2.4 percent in 2010 and 2 percent in 2020. There is strong evidence that the United States is not willing to spend the money necessary to meet its existing commitments, deal with continuing deployments for peacekeeping and other unanticipated missions, develop and acquire a revolution in military affairs, and modernize its current mix of forces.

There is no way to predict whether the United States will increase defense spending to a level that matches its force plans and strategy in the future. If globalization continues to mean the lack of a peer threat and major wars, however, the United States is most likely to try to remain a superpower on the cheap. There will be a continuing mismatch between its strategy and force plans and the money it makes available. It is also likely that the declared foreign policy of the United States will continue to understate the real-world probability of U.S. interventions and peacekeeping activity and consistently push the United States into overdeploying its forces.[9]

The strengths of the U.S. military today are awesome indeed – its ability to project power globally and to integrate land, sea, air, space and information in joint military operations stand alone – but, again in the words of Tony Cordesman, its weaknesses in a globalized era will undermine its ability to execute the strategy needed:

· Growing global political constraints on the way we can use force.

· Global proliferation.

· Globalization of asymmetrical warfare.

· Uncertainty and insufficient resources combine to force a reactive, event-driven strategy.

· Put differently, forces and resources are insufficient to support a consistent global policy. The United States must often say “no” and make hard decisions about its priorities and interests.[10]

“Making hard decisions,” whether about foreign policy priorities or military transformation, has never been an American strength, and the gap between the requirements of America’s global strategy and its military means is likely to keep growing. If the constraints on the supply side, which are exacerbated by the dynamics of globalization, are so severe, it seems imperative that the demand side of the equation be addressed by asking whether the global strategies being called for are too ambitious.

Stephen J. Flanagan, in his introductory survey of Global Century, noted that the “authors of the military chapters in these volumes broadly agree that the global era calls for a military strategy that combines peacetime regional engagement, crisis management, and maintenance of warfighting capabilities to mitigate and contain likely conflicts in the troubled outer periphery.”[11] In fact, Richard Kugler states the requirement more emphatically: “In essence, this new military will be a joint strategy of peacetime strategic shaping, swift wartime power projection and decisive strike operations.” (sic)[12] Setting aside for the moment what kind of U.S. military capabilities are needed to meet the challenges of the global era, Kugler’s portrayal of “peacetime strategic shaping” is both expansive and enthusiastic:

On occasion, U.S. forces may be used to intervene in crises or wage war (for example, to defend Persian Gulf oil fields and other key assets, to rebuff attacks against close friends, or to enforce critical norms of conduct). But on a daily basis, the mission will be peacetime environment shaping for the strategic purpose of promoting favorable changes while dampening chaos and preventing damaging trends. That is, U.S. forces and other instruments will be used to help pursue such political aims as (1) maintaining influence, reassuring friends, creating partnerships and coalitions, and pursuing outreach toward big countries such as Russia and China; and (2) establishing power balances, reducing tensions, discouraging arms races, signaling resolve, warning troublemakers, and deterring threatening behavior.

What it [strategic environment shaping] means is collaborating with peace-minded countries, in consensual and constructive ways, to protect their security, to promote multilateral cooperation and to enhance stability across their entire region. Strategic shaping is respectful of the legitimate interests of those countries that choose to remain outside this collaborative zone. It actively pursues cooperative military ties with former adversaries seeking productive relations with democracies. It applies coercion only against countries that user their own military power to advance illegitimate interests and to bully or conquer their peaceful neighbors. Rather than impose superpower domination, strategic shaping seeks to build stability from the group up, by helping countries live peacefully and encouraging them to work together to pursue progress in ways that reflect their own values and visions.[13]

While less effusive than Kugler and acknowledging that “new or at least more intensive and rigorous analytical approaches to understanding the limits of what can and cannot be achieved through various forms of [naval] presence are required,” Harlan K. Ullman nevertheless believes that “understanding how to employ U.S. military forces to shape the political will and perceptions of foreign actors at a variety of levels will be of critical importance in the 21^st century.”[14] Bradd C. Hayes’s conviction that “peacetime strategic shaping” is the call of the future military is equally firm:

Tomorrow’s security environment will require that more attention be focused on peacetime missions such as engagement, humanitarian assistance, and coalition operations. The aim of peacetime engagement activities should be to help target states build institutional capacities and foster peaceful change. This is not mission creep, but essential mission. We need to reinstill pride in being a soldier-statesperson.[15]

For these Global Century authors, as well as many others, not only is proactive, peacetime engagement by the U.S. military an imperative for preventing conflict, which in turn reduces the demand on U.S. military forces, but also, by implication, it’s doable.[16]

“Shaping” and “engagement,” both relatively broad, diffuse concepts that are used interchangeably and are hard to operationalize, are terms that have largely replaced “presence” (once called “overseas presence”) in the military lexicon. All grand strategies – whether balance of power, containment or chaos-suppression among the globalization-challenged outliers – depend upon both capability and will. The presence of U.S. military forces in a region (unless they are just passing through) sends a message to everyone in the region – the U.S. has interests of sufficient importance that it may use military force to defend or advance them. The act of deploying forces forward during peacetime also signals an awareness (on the part of the United States) that its interests in the region are being threatened. If there’s no threat, why send forces? Presence addresses the “will” side of the equation, because by “being there,” U.S. forces deployed forward express the U.S. commitment and willingness to protect its regional interests. The “tripwires” provided by U.S. presence overseas helped contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War by deterring Moscow, not by “engaging” it or “shaping” it. A contained Soviet Union finally (and unexpectedly) succumbed to its own internal contradictions, not to Western efforts to change the nature of Soviet communism.

Of all the instruments of national power -- diplomacy, economic and military power -- hedging considerations should factor most heavily with respect to the military instrument, if only because military failures tend to be the most costly because of the loss of human life. Our military presence overseas communicates (to both potential adversaries and friends) what we will do if our interests are challenged. Our forces should be there not to “engage” the globalization outliers in the hope of changing them, but to warn them of the consequences of actions they may take. Believing that peacetime military engagement will shape the internal evolution of the globalization outliers is not only naïve – no amount of “rigorous analysis” will ever crack the code of nonlinear complexity – but undercuts deterrence by confusing the message sent by men and women in uniform with that conveyed by Americans in business suits or pinstripes. The military instrument is about coercion, both actual and latent, and it hedges against bad outcomes. Part of the U.S. military’s challenge in coping with the excess demands posed by globalization is staying focused on what its job is, namely deterrence and defense.

Projecting Power and Presence in the Global Era[17]

That the United States has the capability to project power globally is beyond question. What is at issue is America’s will to do so – what constitutes “unacceptable losses” to Americans in the pursuit of what kinds of interests has been, and will continue to be, tested by regional aggressors and would-be hegemons. Americans clearly will support high-intensity, military operations (such as Operations Desert Storm and Allied Force) in support of important regional interests as long as casualties are minimal and the campaign is successful. And just as clearly (see Somalia), Americans will not support an inconclusive or ineffective military operations involving casualties “disproportionate” to minor U.S. interests. In both Desert Storm and Allied Force, U.S. opponents tried to inflict casualties on U.S. forces, but failed, largely because the United States refused to fight in a manner that exposed U.S. forces to significant casualties.

The offense-defense competition between the United States and its potential regional opponents has turned asymmetric. Unable to directly defend against superior U.S. conventional forces, potential opponents (including, but not limited, to globalization’s outliers) are acquiring anti-access capabilities (both conventional and WMD) to increase their ability to inflict higher casualties on U.S. power projection forces. The United States, in turn, must increase the survivability of its forces in the face of increasing anti-access threats. Reducing the vulnerability of U.S. power projection forces is not only intrinsically worthy – it is the lives of young American men and women that are at stake – it is critical to America’s ability to meet the challenges of globalism.

The U.S. ability to ensure that U.S. power projection forces remain highly survivable even as anti-access capabilities grow and proliferate will ultimately dissuade potential opponents from further efforts. The vulnerability of U.S. forces to anti-access attacks increases as they come in closer to engage the enemy. U.S. capabilities to “swiftly defeat” or “win decisively” should reside in forces capable of operating initially from beyond an adversary’s killing zones. If U.S. power projection forces have to come deep into the theater to engage, the United States, in effect, is putting its center of gravity – American casualties – into the adversary’s wheelhouse. For the next couple of decades, highly survivable means standoff and (good) stealth.

Future large-scale military campaigns will be phased campaigns – the United States will fight at a distance until it’s safe to close. Improving standoff, force protection and forcible entry capabilities will shorten the time required before land forces can close, but large forces deployed deep in the theater during peacetime will remain too vulnerable to surprise attacks. U.S. power projection forces must work patiently from the outside in, as they first punish aggression and take down an adversary’s anti-access capability before closing with the enemy.

But, as argued earlier, deploying some forces forward in critical areas, however, is essential as an expression of U.S. commitment and willingness to protect its regional interests. Forward-deployed “trip-wires” not only will help deter the globalization outliers, but, in the event deterrence fails, will serve as a casus belli – Americans will support fighting anyone who kills many Americans, regardless of how important U.S. interests in the region are. “Deter Forward” is not the same thing as “Defend Forward.”

U.S. presence forces should be shaped for handling lesser contingencies (from conflicts against lesser foes to humanitarian relief), not for defending forward against large-scale aggression. Requiring forward stationed and deployed forces to defeat large-scale aggression with little reinforcement ensures that a regional aggressor will have many lucrative “anti-access” targets to hit at the outset of the conflict. The potential payoff (to the aggressor) would be twofold: it would send a message to the American people – “Are U.S. interests here worth these kinds of costs?” – and it could disable the ability of U.S. forces to defeat the aggressor’s subsequent attack. Much in the same way that Saddam Hussein was criticized (in rogue states’ circles) for giving the United States five months to build up its forces in SWA, Slobodan Milosevic was criticized for not attacking the 20-plus bases from which the coalition mounted Allied Force. The next regional aggressor is likely to attack U.S. assets in theater early in the conflict in order to test the will of the United States to intervene. Since large forward deployed forces in peacetime will always be vulnerable to surprise attacks, the United States should not have its ability to defeat large-scale aggression within range of the enemy. U.S. presence forces should raise the bar for large-scale aggression, but not tempt potential aggressors into believing that it could disable through preemption the U.S. capability for defeating large-scale aggression.

U.S. power projection forces must be highly lethal and highly survivable, capable of frustrating an aggressor’s plans and inflicting great pain on him. Conducting “rapid global strike” strictly from CONUS, however, makes it too difficult to mass the fires needed to halt aggression. U.S. power projection capabilities would be greatly enhanced if the U.S. could operate from robust, heavily defended, assured access bases on the periphery of regional theaters, particularly in Asia. The United States would initially wage standoff war from these “periphery bases” and then use them as staging areas for follow-on forces. For example, bombers operating from Guam, Western Australia and Diego Garcia could cover the vast Asian theater. Defending these “periphery bases” from missile attacks would be critical, but much easier than defending closer-in bases from heavier anti-access attacks.

Moving more Air Force firepower into standoff systems could begin a division of labor among the military services across the spectrum of conflict. Although naval standoff systems (missile-carrying ships and submarines) are an important Global Strike asset, the Navy-Marine team is critical to Global Presence and more than capable of handling challenging SSCs. Air Force stand-off forces and strategically-mobile, US-based Army maneuver forces should be optimized for the high end of the spectrum, although lighter Army and Air Force units provide an important land-based element of Global Presence. In the mid-term, space provides the Global Surveillance that enables all U.S. forces, but in the long-term will provide “silver bullet” Global Strike assets.

Absent a major war or a military catastrophe – events our strategy should avoid, rather than incur to order to gain the resources necessary to close the strategy-resources gap – the Defense Department must seek “macro efficiencies” in how it supplies military capabilities. Yet another run at acquisition reform is no substitute for the Pentagon’s continuing failure to address fundamental roles and missions issues. Only much greater role specialization by the services will enable the U.S. military as a whole to meet the global era’s growing demand for U.S. military power at a price that Americans will sustain. But this would require “making hard decisions,” not an American strength.

Multilateralism, Unilateralism and U.S. Defense Strategy in the Global Era

Charges of an “American Unilateralism” or an “Absent America” have dogged the young Bush Administration as it has sought to define its foreign policy priorities and extricate itself from processes and enterprises that it deemed unwise or ineffective. Whether, as President George W. Bush claims, the U.S. is demonstrating “leadership” by clearly stating its view and sticking to it or, as Bush detractors here and abroad allege, is acting unilaterally is not the issue here. The issue, from a defense strategy perspective, is whether the United States can count on the rest of the “democratic community” to help close the growing gap between resources and strategy. Tony Cordesman’s assessment, while typically blunt, is on the mark:

No other power or international power is likely to fill this gap. Kosovo is living evidence of the fact that there is little near- to mid-term prospect that globalization will create meaningful international peacekeeping capabilities under the United Nations. In fact, divisions in the Security Council make it likely that little effort will be made to create any kind of global norms for the use of armed force to intervene in humanitarian, peacemaking, and regional crises and conflicts. While Europe is creating a “crisis-management force” under the European Union, its members are simultaneously making major cuts in their military expenditures and forces. There is no other region where regional coalition partners are likely to create military capabilities that can greatly reduce the strain on U.S. forces.

…Like Britain during the Pax Britannica of a century ago, the United States is likely to remain overdeployed in ad hoc operations and to make resource decisions that steadily compromise its military capabilities. The end result may be a cruel parody of an old joke about force planning, namely, the goal is to do more and more with less and less, until the resulting forces attempt to do everything with nothing.[18]

From a defense strategy perspective, multilateralism would be great if there was much there there from our fellow members of the “democratic community.” Early efforts by the incoming Bush administration, based on the reasonable proposition that our strongest allies should handle instability in their backyards while the U.S. focused on other global responsibilities, to reduce and even end U.S. involvement in the Balkans generated so much backlash that the U.S. backpedaled. Future U.S. military operations will almost always be “combined” or multilateral operations, if only to avoid the charge of unilateralism, but the prospect of the “democratic community” ever dividing the burden of controlling chaos in globalization’s outliers seems even more elusive than greater role specialization in the Department of Defense.

Transforming the U.S. Military to Meet the Challenges of the Global Era

During the campaign, the Republicans sent somewhat contradictory messages to the uniformed military: in his Citadel speech (on September 23, 1999), George W. Bush said that his Administration (after an “immediate, comprehensive review of our military”) would “skip a generation of technology” in order take advantage of an opportunity “created by a revolution in the technology of war” in order to implement his vision for the “transformation of our military” (a more “agile, lethal, readily deployable” force able to “project power over long distances”). On the other hand, candidates Bush and Dick Cheney promised that “help is on the way” to correct the Clinton Administration’s tendency to both overuse the military (in the Citadel speech, Bush promised to replace “diffuse commitments with focused ones” and to be “selective in the use of our military”) and to underfund it. With fond memories of the Reagan build-up, the military had high hopes that the Bush Administration would add enough dollars – the only “help” that the military was really interested in -- to defense to both make today’s force well and invest in building capabilities to meet future challenges. Candidate Bush’s transformation message seemed to fall on deaf ears.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s initial transformation strategy for the Pentagon was bold, but ultimately proved undoable. Convinced that previous major defense reviews – the 1993 Bottom-Up Review (BUR) and the 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) – had been captured be entrenched military bureaucrats, he pushed aside the extensive preparatory work (for the 2001 QDR) of the Joint Staff and the services, and launched his own, closely-held “top-to-bottom” strategic review. Seeking unbiased and innovative input, Secretary Rumsfeld commissioned 15-20 studies, largely conducted by outside experts (defense analysts and retired general officers) and trusted advisors. In a dramatic demonstration that this would not be business as usual, Director of Net Assessments Andrew Marshall, known widely as the father of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and a leading proponent of military transformation, was charged with drafting the Strategy Review, a critical task because Secretary Rumsfeld was determined that his defense review would be “strategy-driven,” not “budget-driven” like previous reviews. By March 2001, most of the study efforts were underway.

Almost from the get-go, the Marshall study was a rumor magnet – Army officers reported that an early draft did not even mention ground troops (an “unintended” exclusion according to an OSD staffer) and the Navy worried about the fate of carriers in Marshall’s depiction of the future anti-access environment. The Rumsfeld panels beavered away through April, as complaints mounted from the military and the Hill about Secretary Rumsfeld’s failure to consult. As late as the second week in May, when Secretary Rumsfeld met with President George W. Bush to seek approval of the new military strategy that the President would announce in his 25 May address at the Naval Academy, the “top-to-bottom” review seemed to be on track.

But three weeks later, all had changed – the Bush speech broke little new ground, the QDR was back on, and the Rumsfeld studies were now merely inputs to the process. The Secretary clearly distanced himself from the Marshall strategy review as he told The Washington Post that “the strategy paper is the strategy paper, and it doesn’t mean it’s the strategy.” Blowback from the military, reinforced by similar resistance on the Hill, almost certainly was the principal factor – a stormy 12 May “tank” session with the Chiefs led to a week-long series of meetings between Rumsfeld and the top brass on the broad guidelines for the QDR – but the Rumsfeld team also was having problems integrating the results of their disparate studies.

Despite his determination to conduct a “strategy-driven” QDR, Secretary Rumsfeld found that, as he acknowledged in a 25 July interview with The Washington Times, “life is budget driven.” The prevailing 2-MTW standard for sizing the U.S. military, namely that it should be capable of fighting two nearly simultaneous major theater wars, was simply unaffordable. In early July, the Secretary told the Senate Armed Services Committee: “When one examines that [the 2-MTW standard] today, several things stand out. First, because we’ve underfunded and overused our forces, we find that to meet acceptable levels of risk, we’re short a division. We’re short of airlift. We have been underfunding aging infrastructure and facilities. We are short high-demand and low-density assets. The aircraft fleet is aging.” Secretary Rumsfeld had already learned that he couldn’t spend his way “out of the box” as his requested $35 billion plus-up for defense in FY2002 was cut to $18.4 billion. This decision by the Bush Administration so dismayed “defense hawks” that the conservative Weekly Standard called on Secretary Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, to resign in protest.

Fiscal realities, namely the Bush Administration’s $1.35 trillion tax cut and the faltering economy’s declining budget surpluses, had undercut the mandate (which President Bush had reiterated in his late May speech at the Naval Academy) to transform the force. The dimensions of the civilian-military debate became simpler and sharper. In order to pay for defense transformation, including a near-doubling of FY02 spending on missile defense, Rumsfeld aides in a 4 August Senior-Level Review Group (SLRG) meeting called for major force structure cuts, reported by The Wall Street Journal (on August 8) as involving 2.8 of the Army’s 10 divisions, 16 of the Air Force’s 61 fighter squadrons and one or two of the Navy’s 12 carriers. The Joint Staff, on the other hand, insisted that the same level (and perhaps a little more) of forces were required. The military chiefs, supported by at least two of the service secretaries, adamantly opposed any force reductions. Secretary Rumsfeld subsequently posed (according to The Washington Times) six questions, such as what would be the impact of withdrawing a heavy-armor division out of Europe or a carrier out of the Med, upon force structure requirements.

Despite continuing reports of impending force structure cuts, Secretaries Wolfowitz (on August 16) and Rumsfeld (on August 17), insisted that no decisions have been made (“That [force structure cuts] hasn’t been decided yet” and “I don’t know yet,” respectively.). Secretary Wolfowitz suggested that the force structure decisions, as well as those affecting major programs (such as the Army’s Crusader artillery and the Navy’s DD-21 destroyer), might be in response to the Defense Planning Guidance for FY03-8 POM, because the Secretary “as a general philosophical principle” believes “in giving people the responsibility of managing their organizations to certain goals; rather than telling them exactly how they should run them.” OSD’s strategy, as Secretary Wolfowitz elaborated, was evolving into saying “I want you to have certain capabilities. You pay for them any way you have to, and if you feel you need to pay for them by cutting an air wing or cutting a division, that’s a decision you make within your budget process.” Of course, what has been left unsaid is that those decisions must be made within a firm budget ceiling.

The standoff between the Rumsfeld team and the uniformed top-brass will not be easily overcome. JCS Chairman General Hugh Shelton told the Secretary in mid-July that there was not sufficient information to make the decisions under consideration, an implicit warning that his Congressionally-mandated assessment of the Secretary’s QDR could be severe. Retired Marine General (and former CINC) Anthony C, Zinni told The Washington Post in early August that “There’s strong sense of alienation between the uniformed leadership and the civilians.” Secretary Rumsfeld must feel further isolated by the strong support that at least two of his service secretaries are giving to the military services. Initially empowered by the Secretary as port of a corporate team to manage the Defense Department, both the Army and Air Force secretaries have supported the service’s resistance to force structure cuts. In mid-July, Army Secretary Thomas White and Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki endorsed Rep. Ike Skelton’s (D-Mo.) call for a 40,000 increase in Army end-strength.

The military resistance to force structure cuts has been echoed on the Hill. In early August, a majority of the House Armed Services Committee (45 Republicans and 37 Democrats) signed a letter to the Secretary warning him of their “strong opposition to any proposal that would seek to diminish the current levels of Army force structure.” In a speech to California Republicans a few days later, House Speaker Dennis Hastert assured them that “There’s not going to be cuts in the military.” The Hill has been decidedly cool to Secretary Rumsfeld’s effort to revive the base closure process and appears to be slam-dunking the Secretary’s effort to get a little transformation into the FY02 budget by retiring a third of the B-1 force to pay for modernizing the rest of an almost-obsolescent force.

Prior major defense reviews (the 1993 BUR and the 1997 QDR) and roles missions review (by the JCS Chairman in 1992-3 and the Commission on Roles and Missions in 1994-5) resulted in little, if any, significant change. But simply “meeting standards” in this QDR would be widely viewed as a defeat for the Rumsfeld team, because the expectation bar had been set so high during the initial stages of the Secretary’s “top-to-bottom” strategic review. The Secretary’s credibility in the building is at stake, as this QDR, somewhat like gays-in-the-military at the beginning of the Clinton Administration, has evolved into a major civil-military showdown. The Secretary is doing the President’s bidding – transform the military – under fiscal constraints set by the President’s tax cuts and the stalled economy. It is inescapable – a military that is transforming itself to meet future challenges must be a smaller military in order to free up the resources to pay for transformation. At this moment (September 9, 2001), the prospects that the military will transform itself to meet the challenges of the global era seem poor.

Postscript. Recall that Tony Cordesman’s “peacetime funding dynamic” which causes the strategy-forces gap would persist because “only [a] major new threat or near catastrophe will lead to major increases in military spending and force structure.”[19] On the day after America’s most recent day of infamy -- September 11, 2001 – the strategic context has changed: there was a “catastrophe” and the United States is in what Washington Post journalist David Von Drehle called the “Gray War, a war without fronts, without armies, without rules, in which the weapon can be any commercial jet and the target any building anywhere.”[20] It’s turned out that the threats and challenges of the Globalizing Era are not in 2010 and beyond. Instead, they are here today. This year’s major defense review will not be strategy-driven or budget-driven – it will be event-driven. In the wake of yesterday’s horrific attacks, the will to make hard decisions will be found and the military will transform itself to meet today’s realities.