Introduction | 1

Introduction

There is increasing evidence that the us national security apparatus, designed for a decades-long great power conflict, is ill-suited to the needs of the twenty-first century and that the burden has largely fallen to a military designed for other purposes. Military forces for the Cold War were designed to deter, and if necessary defeat, the military forces of an opposing great power alliance. Rather than the clash of titans—the militaries of major power alliances colliding on the field of battle—today’s forces are tasked to conduct what the Bushadministration called capacity building, the Clinton administration called nation building, the British called operations in support of civil authorities, and the Marine Corps called small wars. This class of intervention requires a deft employment of all instruments of power, not the military instrument in relative isolation.

Prior to World War II, the Department of War and the Department of the Navy were distinct institutions in parallel with the Department of State. To execute the constitutional responsibilities to conduct foreign affairs, the president, through the State and Navy Departments could employ gunboats and marines for operations below the threshold of declared war—coercive diplomacy and small wars. The War Department stood by with plans to mobilize for war, to raise an army, should Congress declare war.

Today’s national security apparatus is defined in the National Security Act of 1947. The Act was the product of an extensive examination of shortcomings identified in World War Two—a war between great power alliances. The Navy and War Departments were unified under the new Defense Department. Amendments to the Act were made throughout the Cold War—another conflict between great power alliances. At the end of the Cold War great-power competition, there is little reason to believe that the security system designed for it is aligned with the needs of the twenty-first century.

An era of great power conflict ended when the Berlin Wall came down, but great power conflict will come again. A period between major wars—wars between major powers—is an interwar period. Interwar periods are not peaceful, but they are not characterized by wars between major powers; they are characterized by conflict between major and small powers—small wars.

Official Washington failed to recognize the change in the geostrategic environment for what it was, the end of a period of great power conflict and the beginning of an ugly interwar period. Instead, the system designed for great power conflict replaced the Soviet Union with China as the threat and continued churning unabated. But commanders in the field immediately were drawn into small wars with a military force ill suited to the task. More important than the military force structure, major-war thinking was imposed onto small-wars problems with less than optimal results.

The evidence is piling up. Studies from inside the Washington Beltway and beyond are drawing the same conclusions. Political scientists and practitioners have a name for the condition when disparate interests from within and without government come to the same conclusion at the same time—policy ripeness. The time is ripe to reconsider the design of the country’s national security system.

What is the nature of the geo-strategic environment, not just the terrorist threat? What strategy best assures the nation’s security in that environment? What instruments of power must be brought to bear? Which agencies of government house those instruments? Are the capabilities resident in government agencies sufficient in mix and scale? And are we able to orchestrate the instruments of power to assure our nation’s security? Formulating national security strategyis the process of answering these questions.

A Shift in Organizing Principle

The difference between major wars and small wars is not measured by the number of forces committed, the number of casualties, or the war’s duration. The Marine Corps’ Small Wars Manual of 1940[1] provides a definition.

Small wars are operations undertaken under executive authority, wherein military force is combined with diplomatic pressure in the internal or external affairs of another state whose government is unstable, inadequate, or unsatisfactory for the preservation of life and of such interests as are determined by the foreign policy of our Nation.

The Manual further identifies characteristic differences between major wars and small wars.

  • Major wars are conducted between “first rate” powers. Small wars are the interventions of a major power into the affairs of a lesser power, typically failed or failing states.
  • “In a major war, diplomatic relations are summarily severed at the beginning of the struggle. [In small wars] diplomacy does not relax its grip on the situation.”
  • “In a major war, the mission assigned to the armed forces is usually unequivocal—the defeat and destruction of the hostile forces.” “The motive in small wars is not material destruction. It is usually a project dealing with the social, economic, and political development of the people.” [In small wars] the mission will be to establish and maintain law and order by supporting or replacing civil government.”
  • In major wars, the organized forces of peer states seek decisive battle. In small wars, the forces of a major power often clash with irregular forces, and the conflict typically degenerates into guerrilla warfare. “Irregular troops may disregard, in part or entirely, International Law and the Rules of Land Warfare in their conduct of hostilities.”
  • “In major warfare, hatred of the enemy is developed among troops to arouse courage. In small wars, tolerance, sympathy, and kindness should be the keynote of our relationship with the mass of the population.”

Neither of these conceptions is an exact fit to the current conflict environment, but a small-wars conception is a far better starting point for discussion. An orientation on major war accommodates, and even encourages, a military instrument isolated from the other instruments of power. An orientation on small wars demands the orchestration of all instruments of national power. But who shall orchestrate?

Instability in Grand Strategy

Throughout the Cold War, the national security strategyof the United States was associated with the word containment. And for four decades a political consensus held to maintain a standing army for the only time in American history. War plans for major war in Europe, Korea, the Pacific, and the Atlantic, and plans for strategic nuclear warfare, drove military force structure design—what professionals call force development policy.

The East-West debate—the ideological struggle between the East and West—dominated while the North-South debate—the gap between the haves and the have-nots—was submerged. Conflicts in the Third World were assumed to be lesser included cases, that is, a military force designed for major war is assumed to be capable of prosecuting small wars. A demonstrably false assumption, lesser-included-case thinking allowed force developers—primarily the uniformed services—to concentrate their efforts on the less likely but more dangerous threats to America’s vital interests, indeed, its survival.

Since the Cold War ended, presidents have pursued radically different strategies. But their use of force has been consistently high despite the fact that their guiding strategies have been quite different and their reasons for using military force have differed greatly. All made heavy use of force without replenishment, leaving a heavy bill to be paid in the future. There is no reason to believe that strategic stability is on the horizon and, in fact, another pendulum swing took place in 2007 as Congress began to assert itself against the executive branch policies with respect to Iraq. The strategic pendulum may swing faster than the agencies of government can respond.

Nothing has replaced the strategy of containment and the political consensus underlying it. The policy elite engaged in a spirited debate following the end of the Cold War that put forward a spectrum of possible strategies. The public has not been engaged. The post-Cold War strategic debate has ranged from global hegemony to homeland defense, but no stable political consensus has formed around any of the strategic alternatives. Regardless, in this environment described either as strategic vacuum or strategic vacillation, dramatic change is demanded.

Adherents of the various strategies differ on the source of the threat to the United States and, therefore, differ on how to counter the threat. The more restrictive strategies might be inclined to leave the military as an isolated instrument held in reserve for conventional use when vital interests are at stake. The more aggressive strategies require a powerful conventional force, but they also require a force for multiple small wars. All strategies agree on a second strike nuclear force.

Those subscribing to homeland defense and selective engagement tend to see us internationalism as the source of the problem and recommend various degrees of disengagement. Adherents to a homeland defense strategy narrowly define America’s vital interests to be the “security, liberty, and property of the American people.” They see the principal threat as porous borders and unsecured ports of entry; and they see a threat to international commerce as of secondary importance. Those favoring selective engagement tend to see war between great powers as the principal threat to the United States, and reserve the use of force to prevent major power conflict, most likely caused by resource competition.

The collective security strategy is based on the premise that national and international security is a shared responsibility of all states working through international institutions. A threat to one state is a threat to all. Cooperative security is a recent variant retaining much of collective security but focusing on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as the principal threat to international and national security.

Adherents to American hegemony or a primacy strategy believe that America’s position is bolstered by using force to advance its wide-ranging interests abroad. The challenge is to be seen as a benign hegemon rather than as a threat to be countered. The Bushstrategy went beyond primacy. The us government capabilities to be built depend on the strategy chosen, and there is no strategic stability on the horizon.

Instability in Partisan Politics

There is also evidence that there is instability within the two political parties. Much is made of political polarization within the electorate. It is clear that the two parties are polarized, but the two parties do not accurately represent the public. Increasing percentages of the voting public are renouncing long-time party affiliations and identifying themselves as independents. Many of those who continue to claim party affiliation do not feel that either party accurately represents their values and interests. Dominant parties have broken before, and it is possible that the process is now underway.

The two parties tend to find some common ground with regards to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief abroad. The post-Cold War Democratic Party, as represented by the Clinton administration, had a tendency to engage in peacemaking and peacekeeping operations through the un where us vital interests are not at risk and public support is generally lacking. The post-Cold War Republican Party, as represented by the second Bush administration, engaged in discretionary war that the public increasingly found to be reckless and counterproductive. Another no less important split is apparent over domestic issues, but those issues are beyond the scope of this book.

The growing perception is that neither party reflects mainstream America’s policy preferences. A swinging partisan pendulum is one possibility; the fracturing of a party followed by a new alignment is another. Reorganizing the nation’s security apparatus under either of these conditions is problematic at best, perhaps even unwise.

Instruments and Agencies

Means are the finite and specific resources that the nation is willing and able to commit to achieve its security. Some reduce means to dollars, which is not unreasonable depending on their position and role in government. For our purposes here, means are described at two levels of abstraction: instruments and mechanisms. The instruments of national power include at a minimum diplomatic, informational, military, and economic instruments. And further, the instruments of power are housed in the agencies of government that provide the mechanisms necessary to implement the policies chosen by elected and appointed officials.

Instruments are stable over time. Mechanisms are a slowly shifting mix. Assuring the nation’s security is the complex matter of orchestrating the instruments of power by activating the mechanisms spread across government agencies. National security strategy guides this use of power. Strategies can be changed overnight. Significant changes to mechanisms may take a decade or more. Mechanisms, therefore, must be sized and shaped to support a reasonable range of strategies.

For decades, the acronym dime has been used as shorthand for the diplomatic, informational, military, and economic instruments of national power. In the 1960s, there was a direct correspondence between agencies and instruments. The Departments of State and Defense housed the mechanisms supporting the diplomatic and military instruments, respectively. The us Agency for International Development represented the economic instrument abroad, and the us Information Agency communicated America’s message to the world through a variety of mechanisms. The Kennedy administration had a specific policy statement detailing how those instruments would be wielded to counter communist-inspired insurgencies. The State Department was designated lead agency.

A more recent acronym, midlife (military, informational, diplomatic, law enforcement, intelligence, financial, and economic) has gained some currency reflecting the greater complexity in the ways and means of pursuing national security. Others speak of soft power, referring to us influence abroad exerted through private commerce and society rather than through deliberate government effort. But the instruments of power are no longer neatly divided between the agencies. The information agency, when it is clearly needed, has been disestablished. There is no clear policy statement describing how the instruments will be orchestrated. No single cabinet official has authority beyond his or her department. Only the president has authorities above all departments and agencies, and the office of the president becomes a bottleneck.

The Way Ahead

In the post-Cold War period, presidents Clinton and Bush have relied on a relatively isolated military instrument for nation building or capacity building, missions for which the military is poorly suited. For quite different reasons, both parties have become heavy interventionists. And those interventions are small wars. There appears to be a growing bi-partisan consensus that to assure us national security, a small wars capability is required. There is no consensus yet apparent on what an implementation of the capability might be, but there is a clear sense that the country is unprepared.

Unpreparedness for the twenty-first century is apparent in those who authorize the use of force—Congress. Presidents use force at will. Those responsible for shaping military force—congressional authorizing and appropriating committees, the secretaries of defense and of the military departments, and the service chiefs—demonstrated their unpreparedness. And finally, the president’s National Security Council has demonstrated its unpreparedness to orchestrate all the instruments of national power in furtherance of America’s national interests. Each department and agency acts in relative isolation.

That brings us back to the original questions about the suitability of our national security system, and the role the military plays in that larger system. The agencies of government, of which the military is but one, provide the mechanisms through which America’s elected and appointed officials pursue the country’s policies. Policies might change suddenly due to an election or an external strategic shock. The bureaucracies that provide the mechanisms change slowly. Perhaps the most critical component of national security policy is the national security strategy declared and pursued by the president.

The various strategic alternatives represent the range of policies that the mechanisms of government must support. Mechanisms optimized to support one strategy will likely fail catastrophically when applied to a significantly different strategy. With no persistent strategy in sight, suboptimal solutions are the only prudent choice. The mechanisms cannot be redesigned and rebuilt with each incoming administration. A collection of mechanisms representing the instruments of national power must be in place, and special attention must be paid to the ability to orchestrate the instruments.