U.S. National Military Strategy

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	U.S. National Military Strategy


	The Wrong Enemy, Too Few Resources, and a Politically Correct Doctrine

As the flag of the Soviet Union was lowered for the last time on December 25, 1991, Eduard Shevardnadze, the last foreign minister of the Soviet empire, spoke these words of warning, "The cold war is over, beware of the peace!" His words are not an empty warning. They are a prediction of historical certainty.

Mankind has never known perpetual peace. Throughout the history of man, peace has only been an interlude between war and violent conflict.

Who would have thought that within 23 years of the "War to end all wars" that the U.S. would be in a life and death struggle for its survival as a nation.

Who would have thought that within 5 years of the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan that the U.S. would be in a super power struggle with an evil empire with Americans fighting and dying in the far off land of Korea and Viet Nam.

Who would have thought that within a year of the fall of the Berlin Wall that the U.S. would be called to commit its armed forces to preserve the American way of life as a rogue dictator threatened the world's oil supply in the Persian Gulf.

Our first president, George Washington, was especially mindful of this historical certainty. He under stood that peace is only an interlude between recurring war and conflict. Further, he understood that the principal and irreducible responsibility of the national government is the survival of the nation, its citizens and their way of life.

With unparalleled wisdom, he forewarned America's future leaders that "To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace." Nonetheless, our current national leaders have exhibited a dangerous degree of historical blindness. Military naivete, and political expediency. In doing so, they have cast aside the wise counsel of George Washington and the lessons of history. As a consequence, America has adopted a national military strategy that is wrong for its future security.

THE WRONG ENEMY

A national military strategy is a long range plan through which a nation seeks to attain and protect its national aim. The national aim of the U.S. is to preserve "The American Way of Life." which embodies the core values of national survival, representative democracy, individual freedom, and economic opportunity.

To prepare for war during peace, the national military strategy should apply a nation's strength against the greatest threat to the preservation of its core values. Therefore, our national military strategy should be predicated on the enemy who has the present or near term capability to place our core values at risk.

To the contrary, our current national military strategy is predicated on two past enemies, who neither have the present nor potential economic capability or military capability to seriously threaten America's core values. These two past enemies are Iraq and North Korea.

As a result of this wrong strategic focus, our current national military strategy is designated to simultaneously fight and win two major regional conflicts on the Arabian and Korean peninsulas on the scale of the Persian Gulf War. This backward looking strategy is based on the wrong enemy, the wrong locale, and the wrong scale!

Given that Iraq and North Korea are the wrong enemy, ask yourself a question. Which nation has the potential to place our survival and our way of life at risk during the first half of the 21st century? The answer is the Peoples Republic of China. Even a cursory assessment of China's capabilities makes this a self-evident fact.

China is a land of explosive power potential. Its population is approaching 1.3 billion, which is one-third of the world population and five times the population of the U.S. Its vast land is enriched with untapped natural resources. Its economy, which has expanded like a dynamo raising China's per capita income a thousand fold, is the fastest growing economy in the world.

China's totalitarian government, as the world's last major surviving Communist regime, is driven by the will to survive. As the heir to China's great dynasties of the past, it is driven by the quest to restore the historical sovereignty and ancient glory of the Inner Kingdom.

Possessing unwavering political will and enormous human, natural and capital resources, China's leaders are underwriting the establishment of a strong industrial infrastructure, the development of an advanced technological base, and the modernization of a vastly numerically superior military force armed with nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

A historical truth is that the flowering of a new industrial and military power on the world scene carries with it the seeds of destabilization and conflict. Given this historical truth, it is a certainty that China will challenge the U.S. for global leadership in the first half of the 21st century.

Thus, our national military strategy should be designed and resourced to fight and defeat China in a major conflict in the Far East, as well as protect America's armed forces and homeland from Chinese nuclear attack. Instead, it is focused on the wrong enemy, Iraq and North Korea, and blind to the very real threat which China poses to our future national security.

TOO FEW RESOURCES

Compounding our misguided strategic focus on the wrong enemy, is the grave reality that our current national military strategy isn't even viable because it is inadequately supported by too few resources. Thus, the frightening prospect for America's present and future security is the stark fact that the U.S. no longer possesses the military resources to effectively fight and win one major regional conflict on the scale of the Persian Gulf War, let alone the scale of a rising superpower, such as China.

Illustrative of this stark fact is that the U.S. VII Corps, which was the hammer that crushed Iraq's army, no longer exists. The soldiers, the weapons, and the equipment have been discarded in the name of "downsizing." The net effect of "down-sizing" has been that our national military strategy is no longer resourced by a "top down" budget review, wherein the strategy drives the resources. Instead, it is resourced by a "bottom up" budget review, wherein the bottom line drives the strategy.

The danger of this "penny rich, pound foolish" budget review philosophy was recently acknowledged by Congressman Floyd Spence, Chairman of the House National Security Committee, who cautioned that it is "A budget review driven assessment of how much strategy we can afford rather than what our strategy should be." Consequently, our national military strategy is based upon not what is required but what can be risked.

The negative impact of the "bottom up" budget review on military preparedness has been enormous in recent years. Defense spending, which has declined from 6.5% to 3.6% of the gross domestic product and from 27.6% to 17% of the federal budget, has shrunk to pre-Pearl Harbor levels. As a result, the U.S. government now spends more for interest on the national debt, 22% and for health and human services, 21.6%, than it does for our national defense.

While annual defense spending has declined from $400B to $250B, during the past decade, annual spending for interest on the national debt and social services has climbed to approximately $660B. Thus, today, the U.S. government annually spends over twice the amount for debt interest and social services than it does for national defense, its most fundamental responsibility.

In doing so, our national leaders have neglected the fact that our nation's security is their foremost responsibility and first priority. The extent of their neglect is certainly worrisome, when one compares our military's warfighting capability of today with its capability just six short years ago when our armed forces dealt Iraq one of the most one-sided defeats in the history of warfare.

Since 1991, the strength of our armed forces has been reduced 33%, declining from 2.1M to 1.4M personnel. The Army's combat divisions have been reduced 47%, decreasing from 28 to 15. The Air Force's fighter wings have been reduced 33%, falling from 30 to 20. The Navy's carrier battle groups, America's primary power projection resource, have been reduced 27%, from 15 to 11. Lastly, the Navy's surface ships have been reduced 40%, sinking from 560 to 340. This precipitous decline in force structure has been compounded by the fact that modernization funding has fallen 65% since 1985.

This dangerous decline in our military preparedness has reached the point where General Reimer, the Army's top general, recently lamented that "America's Army." Our national leaders refer to this precipitous decline in the euphemistic terms of "down-sizing." The correct term, however, is "wrong-sizing," which, in turn, hs contributed to wrong-thinking relative to our military doctrine.

A POLITICALLY CORRECT MILITARY DOCTRINE

Military doctrine is the collective knowledge of warfare by which military forces guide their actions in support of the national aim. It is rooted in time tested principles of war and proven battlefield fundamentals gained throughout the ages. The principal purpose of military doctrine is best summed up by the mission of the infantry, which is "To close with the enemy in order to kill and destroy him."

Given this principal purpose, our military doctrine should strive to inculcate and nurture the warrior spirit among its soldiers. For, in order to survive and win on the battlefield, they must be able to control their fear of being killed, as well as their fear of killing; for on the field of battle, it is a kill or be killed situation.

To understand the fundamental relationship between military doctrine and the warrior spirit, one must understand human behavior. In this regard, normative human behavior does not encompass the willingness to kill another
human being. We are not predators. We are not, as Hollywood movie director Oliver Stone would have us believe, natural born killers. To the contrary, it is against our natural instinct to kill. It is against our sense of morality to kill. And, it is against our human conscience to kill.

Those of you, like myself, who have experienced combat, can probably recall the struggle between the warrior spirit and the human conscience. When faced with the decision to take a human life in combat, a momentary hesitation was commonplace. Was the momentary hesitation caused by fear? Was it caused by excitement? The answer is neither. The answer is our human conscience.

Thus, a fundamental objective of military doctrine is to imbue its soldiers with the warrior spirit. For without the warrior spirit, its principal purpose of killing and destroying our nation's enemies on the field of battle would never be achieved. Therefore, it is imperative that our military doctrine be built on warfighting missions and battle focused training.

However, our national leaders have allowed, and even encouraged, political correctness to infiltrate our current military doctrine. This inflitration of political correctness into our military doctrine has occurred under the rubric of "Operations other than war."

Operations other than war include a plethora of non-combat operations, such as; arms control, support to domestic authorities, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, security assistance, nation building, support to counter drug operations, noncombatant evacuation operations, and peacekeeping operations.

The increasing emphasis on operations other than war is a source of growing debate within our armed forces, which has raised the following military concerns.

Operations other than war have supplanted warfighting mission with politically correct missions.

Operations other than war have shifted the emphasis from battle focused training to noncombatant training.

Operations other than war have divested the collective might of our armed forces by scattering it throughout the world is distant lands of little, if any, importance to our national interest.

Operations other than war have stretched the endurance of our armed forces with constant deployments to perform unfamiliar missions in unfamiliar lands.

Lastly, and of greatest concern, operations other than war have redirected our soldiers' psychological orientation from preparing to fight and win on the battlefield to enabling them to be dispensers of humanitarian aid and keepers of the peace.

The net effect of this politically correct focus on operations other than war, which emphasizes the turning of "swords into plowshares," is that it is insidiously sapping the warrior spirit from America's armed forces. This may be a tragic mistake for our national security. For as recognized by the renown 19th century military strategist, Carl Von Clausewitz, "The end for which a soldier is recruited, clothed, armed and trained, the whole object of his sleeping, eating, drinking, and marching is simply that he should fight at the right place and at the right time."

SUMMARY

George Washington, as our nation's first president, wisely understood that the national government's most fundamental and irreducible responsibility is the protection and preservation of the American way of life. George Washington, as our first Commander-in-Chief, clearly understood the important relationship between the preservation of the American way of life and military preparedness.

However, our present national leaders are forsaking the wisdom of our founding father. They are forsaking the lessons of history. They are forsaking the military preparedness of our armed forces. And, they are forsaking the warrior spirit of our soldiers.

The consequences of this folly, which may very well be to our nation's detriment, read like a tragic comedy. Our national military strategy is predicated on the wrong enemy. Our armed forces have been reduced to the dangerous point that their ability to even fight and defeat the wrong enemy is suspect. Our reduced military capability has been further eroded by the deleterious diversion of our armed forces from their fundamental purpose of war preparedness to operations other than war. And, our soldiers' warrior spirit is being sapped to the extent that the home of the brave is in danger of becoming the home of the meek.

Given this dangerous course embarked upon by our current national leaders, I close with these words of warning, "The Cold War is over. Beware of the Peace!"