Preeminent military historian Fred Kagan has a long and excellent piece that details some of his concerns with Donald Rumsfeld's vision for the US armed forces. Until I read this, I was a supporter of Rumsfeld's policies (not that I'm an expert on such matters, although I play one on TV), but now I'm not so sure. I imagine the victory in Iraq will teach our defense officials some of the lessons Mr. Kagan points to, and I'm glad there are so many smart people thinking about the subject.
In this world, anything is possible. The U.S. might win a future war relying solely on air power, for the first time in history, with no American or local ground forces involved and no meaningful threat of their deployment. That possibility cannot be excluded. The Rumsfeld vision of military transformation, however, does not pursue that as a possibility; it relies on it as a certainty. By focusing all of America's defense resources on the single medium of air power, Mr. Rumsfeld is betting America's future security on the conviction that the U.S. armed forces will be able to do every time what no military to date has ever been able to do. In doing so, he is greatly simplifying the task of those preparing to fight the U.S. by presenting them with only one threat to defeat.
Update:
TM Lutas discusses net-centric warfare, and has a good reason for why he thinks the US can maintain a permanent advantage over the countries we're likely to fight against.
This is his statement of the problem:
History so far, therefore, has been very clear that "asymmetrical advantages" gained by one state do not normally last very long. Technology and technique inevitably spreads. Other states acquire either similar or counteracting capabilities. The final victors of each new "revolutionary" epoch have not usually been the states that initiated the revolution, but those that responded best once the technologies and techniques had become common property.
It also shows that the initial successes those "revolutionary" states achieved have tended to breed arrogance and overconfidence, hindering their ability to respond as other states began to match their capabilities. Napoleonic France, imperial Germany and Nazi Germany all ossified in their techniques after the initial victories, and lost to enemies who, forced by defeat, built on their own advances more successfully.
The search for an indefinite American "asymmetrical advantage," therefore, requires not merely a revolution in military affairs; it also requires a fundamental revolution in human affairs of a sort never seen before. It requires that America continue to change her armed forces so rapidly and successfully that no other state can ever catch up--indeed, that no other state in the world even try.
But this is a mis-characterization of the facts. It poses an impossible scenario as the goal and then proceeds to suggest that since it is impossible, and no other country has ever done it, we should just give up without trying.
From what I know of Rumsfeld's vision, Kagan's description does not apply there either. Rumsfeld is proposing a military that is responsive to current events. We have had two chances in the Gulf (against one dunce of a military dictator) to move men and materiel into place over months. Rumsfeld, along with many others, have recognized that a behemoth military can't react fast enough. There will be more spec ops--remember Bush's doctrine of preemption. Most of these spec ops will be recon for the air ops to come.
Kagan needs to forget Napoleon, the Kaiser, and Hitler and go read Sun Tzu, Uncle Ho, and Chairman Mao.
More here:
http://www.denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/11/Telegraphingyourpunches.shtml
Yeah, I know what you're saying, and my main point was that I'm not as entirely convinced of Rumsfeld's vision as I was. I do agree that we need to get lighter, I'm just not sure we need to get smaller.
Special ops can't do peacekeeping like light infantry can, and special ops can't take out dug-in armored divisions. Neither can air power alone. Both air power and special ops are great support, and can magnify the effectiveness of standard ground troops, but you can't build a military on them alone.
Since the mid-80’s I have been deeply involved in the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs, network-centric warfare, asymmetric warfare, IW and IO, and all the rest. The groups I worked for and the teams I lead were primarily responsible for evaluating these concepts and assessing and projecting the threat posed by potential adversaries — both States and "non-state actors" — to our military when operating according to these principles. We were widely considered to be among the preeminent experts on these matters in the US Defense community.
I therefore read Mr. Kagan’s article with interest, and while his history is quite good, the conclusions he reaches based on it are, to me, mostly puzzling. I can’t help but feel Mr. Kagan has been reading a different literature on the "RMA" than I ever did, and understands it a different way. Indeed, he says: "The problem with the current vision of military transformation, therefore, is not that it relies on the concept of a revolution in military affairs, but that it does not properly understand that concept."
I would contend that the shoe is actually on the other foot. Of course, it is easy to be confused about this, as all of these concepts were — and I suspect still are — highly contentious and ill-defined, no matter what has been said in various "authoritative" government publications. As always, there is a disconnect between what the thinkers think and the doers do, but never was it so great as in the so-called RMA during the 1990s. I suspect Kagan has read too much into what he’s read and what the military leadership has been saying it wants to achieve, and not enough into what is and has been actually happening. Much of what he writes does [sort of] apply to the military of the Clinton years, when weak leadership and concepts like "force preservation" were allowed to take precedence over concepts like "winning". These factors perverted much of the debate on evolving military doctrine and clouded what it did not pervert. But the actual effect they had I think has been overstated. And I’m not sure Mr. Kagan appreciates the change that the debacle of the Kosovo Campaign made in the operational military, and how those changes were reinforced by the lessons of 9/11.
Nor do many of Kagan’s historical "lessons" apply under the conditions obtaining today and for the foreseeable future [which is about 2030]. His conclusions are redolent with the thinking of several generations ago. It appears he doesn’t appreciate exactly how our doctrinal writings and debates were and are absorbed and interpreted by our real and potential adversaries, be they the Chinese, the [then] Soviets, or Al Qaeda. There has been a longstanding joke in my profession that we have fully crippled the Chinese military by selling them so completely on the RMA — the joke within the joke is that this is substantially true. Nor are the Chinese alone in this predicament. Much of the world believes some astounding things about the US military, crediting us with things we can’t do while blithely unaware of what we can do; being utterly confused by the conflicts within and between US doctrinal debates and political debates; confusing commentary with policy and policy with operational doctrine. In short, we do things in a particularly noisy, messy, and apparently disorderly fashion, giving our adversaries — and sometimes our allies — ample scope to read all the wrong things into what they see. Thus, the history Kagan quotes can be misleading when applied to the current conditions; it rather appears to me that we have confused Kagan almost as much as we have confused the Chinese and the Russians.
Overall, I don’t think Kagan appreciates the very profound differences not just in technology [which is probably wider than he allows] and in the way that technology is employed, but most importantly in the way the US military has learned to think and operate. In some very important ways, the US military has been changing the rules of warfare faster than the other guys can learn the old rules. By the time they think they understand what we’re doing, we are doing something different and surprising. This isn’t "NCW" or "RMA" or even "IO" [though the Russians in particular claim it is] — it’s mainly good ol’ seat-of-the-pants adaptation and flexibility, fed by a technology development cycle that produces innovations roughly twice as fast as the rest of the world can assimilate them. Kagan does not understand this; in fact he turns reality on its head by arguing that; "Since technology inevitably becomes less expensive as it proliferates and as time goes on … the situation for America's would-be adversaries will only improve in this regard."
Yes, it does improve in an absolute sense, but the point Kagan misses is that it has, for more than 20 years, been improving faster here. Buying technology and capitalizing on its capabilities, especially in a military sense, are different things, and is not something that can be exported. This one reason that the militaries of the world are substantially father behind us now than they were during the first Gulf War, despite all the technology we have sold them.
Next, Kagan suggests we are vulnerable to a kind of doctrinal leapfrogging: "Much of America's tested doctrine has been published, much can be deduced from the CNN coverage of America's most recent wars. Once again, America's enemies can start from the position of proven success that the U.S. armed forces achieved, and build from there."
What history really tells us is: no they can’t, because they build more slowly than we innovate. And the people best positioned to be able to build as Kagan suggests are those we are very unlikely to go to war with [e.g. Britain and Australia; Japan and Germany, if they finished rearming.] This may change over time, but that time is measured in decades not years; if we were to stagnate today, the rest of the world might catch up in 20 to 30 years. But we are not stagnating yet.
Nor do I think Kagan well understands the point of what Rumsfeld’s so-called "transformation" really is. At this pint, I’m not sure I understand it perfectly myself, as I left my profession in early 2002 and have been somewhat out of the loop on DOD policy since then. But I suggest that it isn’t as unbalanced as Kagan thinks. It’s not about our military doing "one thing superbly well" and therefore "presenting [the enemy] with only one threat to defeat". It is about doing whatever it wants to do very well and very quickly, whether that be by land, air or sea. It about maximizing flexibility and initiative and striking power, not about air-power vs ground or sea power, or PGMs vs infantry vs armor.
Finally I can’t close without mentioning two of Kagan’s statements that he uses to buttress his points; the first of which I don’t recall being the case and the second of which I find almost bizarre. I mention these not to nit-pick, but because they cast a disturbing light over Kagan’s reasoning in general.
The first statement is: "During the Kosovo operation Slobodan Milosevic withstood the American air attack right up until it became clear that a ground attack might follow--and then he surrendered." I was rather in the thick of the assessment of that conflict, and I don’t remember that. I recall exactly the opposite — that Clinton absolutely ruled out ground forces and that Milosevic "surrendered" because he largely accomplished what he’s set out to do [he thought] and decided it was a good time to give in, fully expecting to remain in power for a long time to come. His mistake was underestimating his internal opposition, not Clinton or NATO. Those of the US military I talked to, or read opinions from, viewed the campaign as an embarrassing debacle, due to Clinton’s blunders and General Clark’s mismanagement.
The second statement is: "America is suffering badly now from having an army that is too small." This sounds like a sop to the antiwar press; how exactly are we "suffering badly" from the size of our army? [It is the Navy that is most severely undersized but we are not suffering from that yet, although we might someday and naval personnel certainly are right now.] Yes, there have been casualties in Iraq, but the fact of the matter is that Americans in Iraq are being killed at roughly the same rate as they are in Oakland, CA. When the casualty rate in a war zone approximates that of a mid-sized city, either the city is very very bad, or the war is going extraordinarily well. And while leftist commentators and Baathist sympathizers sincerely want America to be suffering badly, I see no objective evidence of this whatever. Thus I’m surprised that Kagan, whom I take to be neither a leftist nor a sympathizer, would say it. It smacks of a long and disingenuous — almost dishonest — reach to support a his conclusions by any means, including dragging in a left-wing canard without evidence or elaboration. This is not something I would think a man sure of his arguments would have to resort to.
Now I’m not myself convinced that Rumsfeld’s vision is perfect, or even the best possible, but I think he understanding is much sounder than Kagan’s and I assert that the situation itself is much better than Kagan paints it.
I don't know what he thinks is going to give us this amazing air power. The JSF (X-35) is a pretty freaking cool fighter jet, but it's hardly perfect. And it's not exactly meant to be the only thing on the battle field.
I commented on this a while ago when it was originally in the New Criterion.
http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2003_11_05.html#001222
I still stand by what I said. The matching transformations that our enemies would need to adopt to catch up with us are poison pills to dictatorships. I don't care if the Iranian military adopts our tactics if it creates an Iranian military that forces the broader society to compete with the US in the manner of the UK, Italy, or France instead of the manner of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan.
The JSF (X-35) is a pretty freaking cool fighter jet, but it's hardly perfect.
You've flown it then?
Special ops can't do peacekeeping like light infantry can,[...]
Michael, light infantry doesn't do peacekeeping. Police do. "Peacekeeping" is essentially a BS job concocted by the left and foisted on us. It is not a job that belongs to the military historically, nor should it. A military occupation is martial law and should remain so. Thinking that includes "peacekeeping" in military commanders is nothing but a recipe for disaster(s), which is exactly what is intended by those on the left who "loathe the military".
S3: historically, yes, but I think you're mistaken as to the future. We may not like using our military for "peacekeeping", but that's a role they're going to need to be able to fill -- and hopefully without disaster.
I think you're mistaken as to the future.
Think what you will, but I'm not mistaken.
TM has hit the nail square on the head. While technological superiority is important, the real key is leadership. When freed of it's political shackles, the US military is devastatingly effective. Why? Because innovation, adaptation and initiative are encouraged on the battlefield.
The Russians thought (rather hoped) that we would become bogged down in Afghanistan as they had. Their Generals had predicted disaster for us in Iraq. They were unable to think outside of the rigid shackles of their Soviet combat doctrine. To the Russians, finesse was an unknown word. The hammer was the only tool in their toolbox. It wasn't until the later stages of their fight in Afghanistan that they full committed their Spetznaz guys, (who weren't terribly effective anyway) and by then it was too bloody late.
They assumed that we would ride into Afghanistan the way they had, only to be slaughtered in the canyons as they were. They didn't count on SOG guys on horseback directing airstrikes - the thought never occurred to them.
They shrugged off Afghanistan with the rationale that the Afghans were in the stone age, so it wasn't that hard. Iraq proved them wrong the second time. They counted on us fighting the same way we had in GWI, using massive air strikes, then an armored push. They predicted we would make it to Baghdad, only to be slaughtered in it's streets.
One Russian put it best:
"The Americans have rewritten the textbook, and every country had better take note."
So the argument then is that no one can compete with the US unless their army is led better than ours is -- and no army can be better led unless it is the product of a free and democratic society?
Yup! You got it now. Here's more.
All of this is speculative. The point is to never have to have a physical war again.
Keep the troops at home with AK's under their beds.
This is the point.
Closedanger: That can't be the point, because that's impossible.
Michael Williams, S3 - It's a little worse and better than the interpretation you've gotten. One can, after all, swallow a poison pill and function afterwards, it's just that you've doomed yourself. The RMA is a long term honey trap. The sucker's bet we've laid out to the world is that you have to match our military, beat us, *and then undo the military reforms* before your generals take your dictatorial regime out all while as your military is the most efficient and productive part of your society.
good!