James Carroll. Boston Globe, 15 March 2010. Hosted on the CommonDreams website.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/15-5

Excerpt:

… experts who warn of a coming “cascade of proliferation,” one nation following another into the deadly chasm of nuclear weapons unless present nuclear powers find a way to reverse the current. The main burden is on Russia and the United States, which together possess the vast majority of the world’s nuclear weapons, but President Obama deliberately made himself central to the challenge when he said in Prague, “I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

Although usually considered apart, the broader US defense posture has turned into a key motivator for other nations to go nuclear. The current Pentagon budget ($5 trillion for 2010-2017) is so far beyond any other country, and the conventional military capacity it buys is so dominant, as to reinforce the nuclear option abroad as the sole protection against potential US attack.

Compiled by the Project on Defense Alternatives, 11 March 2010.
http://www.comw.org/pda/budgetreview.html

A compilation of critical analysis and opinion from 30 analysts and policy centers.

a compilation, Defense Strategy Review Page, 03 March 2010 .
http://www.comw.org/wordpress/dsr/obama-nuclear-policy-a-debate

Excerpt:

This debate began when Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group wrote a February 10, 2010 commentary for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. I posted his commentary on this site and wrote a response. I then invited a variety of leaders of nuclear disarmament efforts and specialists in nuclear issues to respond to the Mello-Knight exchange.

In all there have been ten contributors to this debate which touches on many important points of agreement and disagreement. This is a discussion that needs to continue among experts, activists, and the wider citizenry.

Obama Nuclear Policy Debate Participants to date:

Greg Mello, Los Alamos Study Group
Charles Knight, Project on Defense Alternatives
Martin Senn, U. of Innsbruck
Bill Hartung, Arms and Security Initiative, New America Foundation
Paul Ingram, BASIC
Jonathan Granoff, Global Security Institute
Todd Fine, Global Zero
John Isaacs, Council for a Liveable World
Robert G. Gard, Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation
Matthew Hoey, Military Space Transparency Project

as delivered by Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas Wednesday, 03 March 2010.
http://www.jcs.mil/speech.aspx?ID=1336

Excerpt:

I’ve come to three conclusions – three principles – about the proper use of modern military forces:

1) … military power should not – maybe cannot – be the last resort of the state. Military forces are some of the most flexible and adaptable tools to policymakers. We can, merely by our presence, help alter certain behavior. Before a shot is even fired, we can bolster a diplomatic argument, support a friend or deter an enemy. We can assist rapidly in disaster-relief efforts, as we did in the aftermath of Haiti’s earthquake. We can help gather intelligence, support reconnaissance and provide security.

And we can do so on little or no notice. That ease of use is critical for deterrence. An expeditionary force that provides immediate, tangible effects. It is also vital when innocent lives are at risk. So yes, the military may be the best and sometimes the first tool; it should never be the only tool.

2) Force should, to the maximum extent possible, be applied in a precise and principled way.

3) Policy and strategy should constantly struggle with one another. Some in the military no doubt would prefer political leadership that lays out a specific strategy and then gets out of the way, leaving the balance of the implementation to commanders in the field. But the experience of the last nine years tells us two things: A clear strategy for military operations is essential; and that strategy will have to change as those operations evolve. In other words, success in these types of wars is iterative; it is not decisive.

Editor’s Comment:

Mullen’s first principle is dangerous in the extreme. It is a sad reminder of the militarization of the American state. Mullen suffers from an inexplicable amnesia of the horrors of war in the 20th Century.

America will likely be paying a high price for decades to come in what comes around from the quick and easy resort to war in 2002-2003 by policy-makers enthralled with their military instrument. If war is not a last resort, then policy-makers are abject failures as leaders.

Carl Conetta. Foreign Policy in Focus, 03 March 2010.
http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_pentagons_runaway_budget

Excerpt:

Following the collapse of Soviet power, America’s leaders set more ambitious goals for the U.S. military, despite its smaller size. This entailed requiring the armed services to sustain and extend their continuous global presence, improving their readiness and speed, increasing peacetime engagement activities, and preparing to conduct more types of missions quickly and in more areas. Recent U.S. strategy has looked beyond the traditional goals of defense and deterrence, seeking to use military power to actually prevent the emergence of threats and to “shape” the international environment. U.S. defense planners also elevated the importance of lesser and hypothetical threats, thus requiring the military to prepare for many more lower-probability contingencies.

by Carl Conetta and Charles Knight. Defense News, 21 February 2010.

During the past decade, the U.S. Defense Department has enjoyed a rise in its budget unprecedented since the Korean War. With President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget request, it is up nearly 100 percent in real terms from its post-Cold War low. But few observers believe that this level of spending can continue in light of the mounting national debt. So it is wise to think now about options for savings.

A way to begin is to ask, what has driven budgets so high? Obviously, the wars are part of the answer. But they account for only 20 percent of today’s expenditures. And they are the least likely targets for economizing.

It is more fruitful to reflect on the shortcomings in past efforts at defense reform. Can we do it better? It is also worth thinking about the practice of force modernization during the post-Cold War period, which has been distinctly undisciplined.

The end of the Cold War presented a unique opportunity – as well as a manifest need – for the structural reform of our defense posture. The force reductions of the 1990s necessarily risked decreased efficiency, due to the loss of economies of scale affecting support activities and equipment acquisition. The standard solution to such problems is to restructure as one gets smaller, matching reductions in size with a reduction in complexity – a practice the DoD did not, for the most part, follow.

Although smaller, DoD and the services have largely retained or even increased their complexity. For instance, there are today 50 major commands either one step above or below the service level – not much different from during the Cold War.

In our recent study of budget trends, we identify a dozen areas where significant changes had been proposed in the 1990s. These involved service roles and missions, consolidation of various support and training functions, and recentering budget and acquisition planning at the joint level.

In addition, the need to reform DoD’s acquisition, logistics and financial management systems has been evident for a long, long time. However, only two reform initiatives – competitive sourcing and military base closures – were pursued far enough to yield significant annual savings, and these have not amounted to more than 4 percent of the defense budget.

There also was hope in the mid-1990s that a “revolution in military affairs” might lead to new efficiencies. We would reap more bang for the buck by means of increased battlefield awareness, improved logistics, increased capacities for standoff precision attack, and the networking of units within and across services.

In some areas, such as precision attack, capability has dramatically increased. Theater logistics also have improved. But nowhere has the revolution in information technology led to manifest and substantial savings. Rather than supplant-ing legacy capabilities and platforms, the new technology has mostly just supplemented them.

In prospect, the evolution of net-centric warfare might reduce the need for redundant capabilities. But progress toward the services sharing a common nervous system has been slow and mostly involved special operations units and precision ground attack. Generally, net-centric capabilities exist as an anemic overlay to traditional service-centric structures and assets.

DoD and the services have faced little pressure to economize or transform during the past decade. This is also evident in equipment acquisition.

We can discern three distinct acquisition trends at work in recent decades. First, there are legacy programs that came forward from the Cold War period with considerable institutional momentum. Second, there are programs reflecting the revolutionary potential of new information technologies. Finally, there are adaptive programs, such as the recent mass purchase of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, that correspond to new mission requirements.

In an ideal world, the imperative to adapt to new missions and circumstances would draw on the revolutionary potential of new technologies to rewrite or supplant legacy programs. But this has not happened.

Too much of the $2.5 trillion in modernization funding since 1990 perpetuated the status quo circa 1990. Transformational acquisition was mostly restricted to producing supplements, such as Predator drones, to the legacy arsenal. And adaptive acquisition was largely delayed until field experiences forced a flurry of ad hoc efforts beginning six years ago.

The Pentagon’s central authorities have done too little, too late to compel the integration of modernization efforts along adaptive lines. Legacy, transformational and adaptive modernization have lurched forward together, but poorly integrated and competing for resources. And yet, even though modernization spending now surpasses that of the Reagan era, no one is happy with the result.

For 10 years, Congress and the White House have been permissive when it comes to defense spending; this has undercut any impetus for reform and prioritization. Obama’s decision to further boost the defense budget suggests that this dysfunction will persist for a while, but this, too, is a bubble that will burst. Preparing for that eventuality means revisiting options for structural reform and getting clearer on our strategic priorities.

Remarks of Vice President Biden at National Defense University – As Prepared for Delivery, 18 February 2010.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-vice-president-biden-national-defense-university

Excerpt:

Now, as our technology improves, we are developing non-nuclear ways to accomplish that same objective. The Quadrennial Defense Review and Ballistic Missile Defense Review, which Secretary Gates released two weeks ago, present a plan to further strengthen our preeminent conventional forces to defend our nation and our allies.

Capabilities like an adaptive missile defense shield, conventional warheads with worldwide reach, and others that we are developing enable us to reduce the role of nuclear weapons, as other nuclear powers join us in drawing down. With these modern capabilities, even with deep nuclear reductions, we will remain undeniably strong.

Editor’s Comment:

When Vice President Biden speaks of plans to “further strengthen … preeminent conventional forces” with “capabilities like an adaptive missile defense shield” and “conventional warheads with worldwide reach” he seeks to reassure his domestic audience that nuclear disarmament will not make America less secure. His words, however, do not reassure other nuclear powers or potential future nuclear powers such as Iran who will perceive these enhanced American conventional capabilities as strategic threats to their national security.

Biden surely understands that he is not really offering us a pathway to nuclear abolition. We will not get there if other nations are expected to relinquish their nuclear arsenals to face “undeniable” conventional power from the U.S.

If Biden’s speech truly represents the elaboration of the “President’s Prague Agenda” it leaves us with a very big gap (conceptually and practically) between the near term goal Biden articulates (“We will work to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.”) and the longer term goal (“We are working both to stop [nuclear weapons] proliferation and eventually to eliminate them.”) which President Obama confirmed in Prague.

Barry Blechman. New York Times, 18 February 2010.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/opinion/19blechman.html

Excerpt:

Here’s how a global nuclear disarmament treaty could work. First, it would spell out a decades-long schedule for the verified destruction of all weapons, materials and facilities. Those possessing the largest arsenals — the United States and Russia — would make deep cuts first. Those with smaller arsenals would join at specified dates and levels. To ensure that no state gained an advantage, the treaty would incorporate “rest stops”: if a state refused to comply with a scheduled measure, other nations’ reductions would be suspended until the violation was corrected. This dynamic would generate momentum, but also ensure that if the effort collapsed, the signatories would be no less secure than before.

Editor’s Comment:
There is something missing in this measured disarmament scheme which invalidates it as a path to full nuclear disarmament. Blechman makes an erroneous assumption shared by too many nuclear disarmament advocates. He assumes that nuclear weapons are a class of weapons that can be dealt with in isolation from the problems of international security and insecurity. Nuclear weapons cannot be separated strategically from the context of the conventional military power they supplement.

Note the following phrase in the above excerpt from Blechman: “To ensure that no state gained an advantage…” His prescription applies only to nuclear weapons and presumes no adjustments to conventional military power. In those conditions some states stand to gain considerable advantage from nuclear disarmament.

Imagine the case of Russia in Blechman’s staged draw down of nuclear forces with the U.S. As Russia approaches zero nuclear weapons they become more and more vulnerable to superior U.S. conventional military power.

Without parallel and compensatory reductions and adjustments in conventional forces and strong political assurances weaker nations such as Russia will never agree to give up all their nuclear weapons.

Careful schemes of balanced nuclear weapons disarmament of the type that Blechman argues for cannot by themselves get us to zero nuclear weapons. Compensating for the national insecurities arising from imbalances in conventional military power must be part of any formula for full nuclear disarmament. We need to work toward an international security regime that delivers the reassurance of fifty years without international aggression and military intervention. After that period of peace nuclear nations might be ready to go to zero.

Greg Mello. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 10 February 2010.
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/the-obama-disarmament-paradox
Greg Mello is the executive director and co-founder of the Los Alamos Study Group.

______________

Last April in Prague, President Barack Obama gave a speech that many have interpreted as a commitment to significant nuclear disarmament.

Now, however, the White House is requesting one of the larger increases in warhead spending history. If its request is fully funded, warhead spending would rise 10 percent in a single year, with further increases promised for the future. Los Alamos National Laboratory, the biggest target of the Obama largesse, would see a 22 percent budget increase, its largest since 1944. In particular, funding for a new plutonium “pit” factory complex there would more than double, signaling a commitment to produce new nuclear weapons a decade hence.

So how is the president’s budget compatible with his disarmament vision?

The answer is simple: There is no evidence that Obama has, or ever had, any such vision. He said nothing to that effect in Prague. There, he merely spoke of his commitment “to seek . . . a world without nuclear weapons,” a vague aspiration and hardly a novel one at that level of abstraction. He said that in the meantime the United States “will maintain a safe, secure, and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies.”

Since nuclear weapons don’t, and won’t ever, “deter any adversary,” this too was highly aspirational, if not futile. The vain search for an “effective” arsenal that can deter “any” adversary requires unending innovation and continuous real investment, including investment in the extended deterrent to which Obama referred. The promise of such investments, and not disarmament, was the operative message in Prague as far as the U.S. stockpile was concerned. In fact, proposed new investments in extended deterrence were already being packaged for Congress when Obama spoke.

To fulfill his supposed “disarmament vision,” Obama offered just two approaches in Prague, both indefinite. First, he spoke vaguely of reducing “the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy.” It’s far from clear what that might actually mean, or even what it could mean. Most likely it refers to official discourse–what officials say about nuclear doctrine–as opposed to actual facts on the ground. Second, Obama promised to negotiate “a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty [START] with the Russians.” As far as nuclear disarmament went in the speech, that was it.

Of course, Obama also said his administration would promptly pursue ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, an action not yet taken and one entirely unrelated to U.S. disarmament. The rest of the speech was devoted to various nonproliferation initiatives that his administration planned to seek.

On July 8, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced their Joint Understanding, committing their respective countries to somewhere between 500 to 1,100 strategic delivery vehicles and 1,500 to 1,675 deployed strategic warheads, very modest goals to be achieved a full seven years after the treaty entered into force. Total arsenal numbers wouldn’t change, so strategic warheads could be taken from deployment and placed in a reserve–de-alerted, in effect. The treaty wouldn’t affect nonstrategic warheads. It wouldn’t require dismantlement. As Hans Kristensen at the Federation of American Scientists has explained, the delivery vehicle limits require little, if any, change from U.S. and Russian expected deployments.

Ironically, it’s possible that the retirement PDF of 4,000 or more U.S. warheads under the Moscow Treaty and other retirements ordered by George W. Bush may exceed anything Obama does in terms of disarmament. As for the stockpile and weapons complex, Bush’s aspirations were far more hawkish than Congress ultimately allowed. Real budgets for warheads fell during his last three years in office. Now, with the Democrats controlling the executive branch and both houses of Congress, congressional restraint is notable by its absence. What Obama mainly seems to be “disarming” is congressional resistance to variations of some of the same proposals Bush found it difficult to authorize and fund.

Last May Obama sent his first budget to Congress, calling for flat warhead spending. At that time, the administration was still displaying a measured approach toward replacement and expansion of warhead capabilities.

That said, in last year’s budget the White House did acquiesce to a Pentagon demand to request funding for a major upgrade to four B61 nuclear bomb variants–one of which had just completed a 20-year-plus life-extension program. Just one day before that budget was released a grand nuclear strategy review previously requested by the armed services committees was unveiled. It was chaired by William Perry, a member of the governing board of the corporation that manages Los Alamos, and recurrent Cold War fixture James Schlesinger. [Full disclosure: Perry is also a member of the Bulletin's Board of Sponsors.]

The report’s recommendations for increased spending and weapons development quickly began to serve as a rallying point for defense hawks–surely the point of the exercise. Overall, it was largely a conclusory pastiche of recycled Cold War notions, entirely lacking in analysis and often factually wrong. But neither the White House nor leading congressional Democrats offered any public resistance or rebuttal to its conclusions.

More largely, opposition to nuclear restraint within the administration quickly emerged from its usual redoubts at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the Pentagon, STRATCOM, and interested players in both parties in Congress. Plus, Obama left key Bush appointees in place at NNSA while the Pentagon added some familiar faces from the Clinton administration, leaving serious questions about the ability of the White House to develop an independent understanding of the issues, let alone present one to Congress.

Either way, potential treaty ratification is surely a major factor in White House thinking. Senate Republicans, as expected, are demanding significant nuclear investments prior to considering ratification of any START follow-on treaty. Democratic hawks, especially powerful ones with pork-barrel interests at stake such as New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman, also must be satisfied in the ratification process. All in all this makes the latest Obama budget request a kind of “preemptive surrender” to nuclear hawks. So whether or not the president has a disarmament “vision” is irrelevant. What is important are the policy commitments embodied in the budget request and whether Congress will endorse them.

Investments on the scale requested should be flatly unacceptable to all of us. The country and the world face truly apocalyptic security challenges from climate change and looming shortages of transportation fuels. Our economy is very weak and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The proposed increases in nuclear weapons spending, embedded as they are in an overall military budget bigger than any since the 1940s, should be a clarion call for renewed political commitment in service of the fundamental values that uphold this, or any, society.

Those values are now gravely threatened–not least by a White House uncertain about, or unwilling or unable to fight for, what is right.

Editor’s Comment:

Mello does a good job of explaining why there will be little progress toward nuclear abolition during the Obama administration. Further he makes a good case that the current administration seems to be headed towards feeding the nuclear weapons complex to a greater degree than Bush was able. Who’d of thought!

But Mello misses on a couple points. One is that he dismisses too quickly the nuclear abolition aspiration Obama stated in Prague. Those few words may have little affect on policy, but they do mark a return to the rhetoric of all atomic age administrations up until George W. Bush markedly abandoned such aspirations. What is the value of that rhetoric? Mostly it gives credence to those who organize around abolition — something of value, but not much.

Secondly, Mello states that when Obama spoke of…

…reducing “the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy” it’s far from clear what that might actually mean, or even what it could mean.

Actually, this statement of Obama’s refers to something quite specific and important. The U.S. has been advancing for several decades to an unprecedented level of conventional force dominance over all other nations (see Bernard I. Finel on strategic meaning of U.S. conventional military power). At this point the U.S. can anticipate gaining even more strategic advantage if it can convince other nations to join in disposing of nuclear weaponry (for an official statement of this strategic formula see Vice President Biden’s speech at the National Defense University on 18 February 2010.) This is indeed quite an aspiration!

This connection of conventional dominance to nuclear dominance brings me to the other shortcoming of Mello’s article. Nuclear abolition will be impossible without a significant restructuring of the international (in-)security system. Why would Russia or China eschew nuclear weapons or N. Korea and Iran abandon efforts to obtain them while these nations remain utterly vulnerable to U.S. conventional strike?

Leaders of popular efforts for nuclear disarmament almost never acknowledge this strategic problem. That’s a disservice to their cause, because it leaves a major obstacle to disarmament in place with no plan (or even awareness of the need for a plan) to remove it.

The eventuality of an agreement to abolish nuclear weapons will require the U.S. to first draw down its conventional military power. And concurrent to a deep draw down of US conventional military power there must be a build up of international structures which can take up more and more of the responsibility for global security.

Such a transfer of power and responsibility will probably happen someday, but we are certainly not presently on that path. That is one more “change” that Obama is not pursuing, not even aspirationally.

Greg Mello responds to the editor’s comments:

I think your comments are excellent. Let me begin with the second one, with which I wholly agree. Our work here at the [Los Alamos] Study Group has emphasized nuclear weapons issues in part because of our geographic, and hence political, locus adjacent to the two largest nuclear weapons laboratories.

The barrier to nuclear disarmament posed by military policies and investments that express an aspiration for “full spectrum dominance” on a global scale is almost certainly insuperable. Nuclear disarmament is only consistent with a quite different conception of national security than we now have and with a quite different economic structure internally as well. The good news — and I think we have to make it good where it may not appear so at first glance, since we have no other choice — is that our empire is failing.

Your first point, which relates to the symbolic value of Obama’s disarmament statements, is also sound, but here I think that symbolic value is greatly outweighed by the passivity and compliance which his statements have engendered in civil society. The actors and forces which could and should be forcefully working for disarmament have been themselves disarmed by what amounts to propaganda.

Hypocrisy may be the homage paid to the ideal by the real, but it is not leadership, it is not honest, and it will not produce anything of value in this case. At the moment, it is allowing the nuclear weapons establishment to do what it could not accomplish previously: increase production capacity and provide greater, not lesser, endorsement of nuclear weapons in all their aspects, both materially and symbolically.

Obama’s disarmament aspiration, so called, is a faint echo compared to the full-throated endorsement of nuclear weapons it is enabling.

Carl Conetta. Project on Defense Alternatives, 05 February 2010.
http://www.comw.org/pda/1002BudgetSurge.html

Federal Debt as Percent of Gross Domestic Product

Excerpt:

The most ready comparison to America’s current circumstance are the years of the Second World War. Back then, the level of debt rose higher than it has today, but the period during which the burden exceeded 100% of GDP lasted only 4 years. Today, by contrast, it looks as though the period during which debt will equal or exceed 100% of GDP will last for more than twice as long. If we think of the mid-1940s as representing “the Mount Everest” of US debt accumulation, then the period after 2008 should represent “the Tibetan plateau” (which is not as high as Everest, but far wider.)

Lawrence J. Korb, Sean Duggan, and Laura Conley. Center for American Progress, 04 February 2010.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/02/qdr_fail_resource.html

Excerpt:

The QDR … does not prioritize the missions that the military must be prepared for. The document states that “successfully balancing [DOD’s priorities] requires that the Department make hard choices on the level of resources required as well as accepting and managing risk in a way that favors success in today’s wars,” yet it also notes that “U.S. forces must be prepared to conduct a wide variety of missions under a range of different circumstances.” In other words, the QDR promises to make tradeoffs but asserts that DOD must be capable of confronting every contingency.

Editor’s Comment:

Follow the money. The priorities are reflected in where the money goes. A few changes, per usual, at the margins. Mostly the same ol’ same ol’ division of spoils.

Bernard I. Finel. Armed Froces Journal International, February 2010.
http://www.afji.com/2010/02/4387134

Excerpt:

A fundamental challenge in devising a strategy for the use of American military power is that the world has literally never seen anything like it. The U.S. today has military capabilities at least equal to the rest of the world combined. There is virtually no spot on the globe that could not be targeted by American forces, and at most a small handful of countries that could thwart a determined U.S. effort at regime change — and some of those only by virtue of their possession of nuclear weapons.

American military capabilities are not a potential form of power, subject to use only following a lengthy mobilizing and requiring a long campaign to achieve significant goals. Instead, the U.S. can destroy fixed locations in a matter of hours or at most days, and implement regime change in a matter of weeks or a few months.

Because this capability is so novel — dating only to the end of the Cold War — American strategists lack a clear framework to guide the utilization of this force. They have sought to match capabilities to conceptions of the use of force from a different era, one in which the Cold War made regime change unpalatable due to the risk of escalation and that tended to make localized setbacks appear as loses in a perceived zero-sum competition with the Soviets.

The reason, in other words, that the U.S. didn’t simply remove Fidel Castro from power was that after 1962, the international consequences seemed too high and the goal too risky. The reason American leaders felt compelled to engage in a lengthy counterinsurgency in Vietnam was the concern that a communist victory would have been a setback in the broader struggle. But imagine a world in which there were few or no international consequences to removing Castro from power, and imagine a world in which the commitment to Vietnam was strictly commensurate to the threat that the Vietnamese communists could pose to the U.S. That is the change in context that has occurred over the past 20 years, and the U.S. has not yet adapted.

Editor’s Comment:

And so many in the U.S. choose to ignore how this dominant military power motivates other nations to seek nuclear weaponry or hold tightly to those they have acquired already!

Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo 46, 26 January 2010.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/Assessing_the_2010_QDR.pdf

Excerpt:

Today’s military is stressed by having nearly 25% of the full time military overseas, including 16% in overseas operations.

How does the QDR seek to reduce the stress of overseas stationing and deployment?

In recent years large counter-insurgency campaigns have demanded much of the military’s attention and energy.

Is the QDR preparing for more of the same in the future? At what scale and frequency?

Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo 45, 18 January 2010.
http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1001PDABM45.pdf

Excerpt:

What can be said reliably is that:

First, the level and duration of debt forecast by the administration, when taken together, constitute a historically unprecedented situation for the United States. Similarly, our global context is new and changing rapidly. We are entering terra incognita.

Second, some of the assumptions and inputs on which the administration bases its plans and forecast are either bound to change or are contested. As noted earlier, a key component of its defense plan – the cost of foreign operations – is merely a “place marker” today. Perceived requirements due to the wars could easily add $250 billion in spending for 2011-2017. Moreover, the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the plan forecasts that it will yield larger deficits and more debt due to lower revenues and increased expenditures. It forecasts higher interest rates and, therefore, higher interest payments.

Finally, regardless of the actual determinable effects of the government’s debt burden in the longer-run, the sudden growth of that burden and its persistence at a higher-level is bound to intensify political contention around budget and fiscal issues. The Obama administration will face intense pressure to economize in some areas.

Carl Conetta. Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Report 20, 18 January 2010.
http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1001PDABR20.pdf
Executive Summary: http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1001PDABR20exsum.pdf

Excerpt:

… DoD’s total workforce is probably as large today as it was in 1989 (or even larger), but less of the total is in uniform. This accords with the rise in O&M spending and also with studies… which suggest that the contractor workforce may have grown by as much as 40% since 1989. By comparison, the full-time military and DoD civilian workforces are both about 32% smaller today than in 1989.

When strategic discipline is lax, legacy modernization tends to predominate, due to its institutional momentum. Eventually, external circumstances may compel a rush of ad hoc adaptive measures – as is the case today with regard to procurement to meet counter- insurgency needs. These may then come to predominate, prematurely. The only remedy is to strongly discipline force modernization in accord with a sustainable, adaptive, and cost-effective national security strategy. The various scenarios and missions that define military requirements must be strongly prioritized, and these priorities must be enforced from the center.

A permissive spending environment is the precondition for the types of problems identified in this report. It is easy enough to point to the 11 September 2001 attacks as the progenitor of this condition. However, as we note, the surge in spending began before 2001. Moreover, Gallup polls show that public support for increased spending was higher in the two years prior to the attacks than in the two years after. And it has receded significantly since then. This points to a more fundamental enabling condition: presently there seems to be little political gain (and much risk) in pressing for the type of tight DoD budget constraints that might prompt through-going reform and transformation. Nonetheless, emerging fiscal realities may soon compel increased attention to how the nation allocates scarce resources among competing national goals — foreign and domestic, military and non-military. And this might put the nation on the road to a disciplined defense.

Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), pp. 21-25, January 2010.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/DOTE F-35 JSF 2009 Annual Report.pdf

Tony Capaccio. Business Week, 07 January 2010.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-07/gates-calls-for-delay-in-pentagon-purchases-of-lockheed-f-35s.html

Excerpt:

One recent study agreed with a similar one from a year earlier that predicted a 2 1/2 year delay in development beyond the current target of October 2014 and an added cost of $16.5 billion. The new estimate recommended the Pentagon add $314 million to the five-year plan to beef up testing. Gates did so.

Editor’s Comment:

With Afghan war costs rising and political pressure to reign in the federal deficit mounting Gates needs to reduce the year to year Pentagon procurement budget for big ticket items. Postponing and stringing out the acquisition of major platform buys (such as a new fighter aircraft like the F-35) is one way to get some of those savings without having to take on the much harder political task of canceling programs or cutting structure. Unfortunately such an approach usually makes an acquisition program more costly when production efficiencies of scale are lost as fewer units are manufactured each year over a longer period.

This article says, “More than $2.8 billion that was budgeted earlier to buy the military’s next-generation fighter would instead be used to continue its development.” So it may seem that this decision simply shifts spending from production to development accounts with neutral effect on the Pentagon topline. However the article doesn’t adequately address whether Gates may have been facing increased development costs overlapping ambitious production schedules which would have cost much more in the next five years than had been previously planned. This decision delays the onset of large production costs to the years after 2014.

The Navy has indicated it will need to buy more F/A-18s if the F-35 doesn’t appear when it had previously been promised. But the Navy’s requirement assumes there are no carrier cuts (and associated Naval combat wing cuts) in this period. If there are, it will make those F/A-18s redundant.

And what if five years from now drones are proving themselves to be the combat craft of the future at the very time the F-35 is meant to start appearing in operational units in significant numbers? Maybe then the buy of the next generation manned fighter plane can be in the range of 1200 units instead of the 2400 units in the current plan. Then we could realize real savings in this acquisition program. (for some options on future fighter buys and program savings see: David Axe, “Congressional Budget Office’s Plans to Save the Air Force”, War is Boring, 18 May 2009.)

If five years from now drones play a more central role in air combat power and there are fewer carriers in the fleet the decision to slow the F-35 acquisition program down will prove to be a very practical one.

Loren B. Thompson. Lexington Institute, 14 December 2009.
http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/budget-moves-buoy-defense-industry

Excerpt:

First, even before President Obama decided to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, the administration had already decided to spend more on overseas contingencies in 2011 that the $130 billion it planned to spend in 2010. Second, Jason Sherman of insidedefense.com reported this month that the White House will support increasing the regular defense budget (not including overseas contingencies) by $14 billion above what was planned for 2011, meaning it will rise from the $542 billion forecast in May to $556 billion. Third, Vago Muradian of Defense News reported this weekend that total increases above the May plan for the regular defense budget across the 2011-2015 spending period will reach $100 billion.

Editor’s Comment:

Looks as if the Obama administration’s plan to reduce Federal expenditures on war (contingency) operations and to hold increases in the base Pentagon budget to dollar inflation have come unraveled at less than a year into the budgeting plan and the administration. It is a shame, because it is so unnecessary.

Stephen M. Walt. ForeignPolicy.com, 30 November 2009.
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/11/30/why_they_hate_us_ii_how_many_muslims_has_the_us_killed_in_the_past_30_years

Excerpt:

Yet if you really want to know “why they hate us,” … the fact remains that the United States has killed a very large number of Arab or Muslim individuals over the past three decades.

Editor’s Comment:

And no amount of “public diplomacy” or “American narrative” will win friends when the U.S. is responsible for killing sons and daughters of people in their home land. That is a basic piece of strategic wisdom!

Miriam Pemberton. Institute for Policy Studies, 18 November 2009.
http://www.ips-dc.org/getfile.php?id=461

Excerpt

Because [the Obama administration's 2010] military budget is larger, in real terms, than any of its Bush administration predecessors, 87 percent of our overall security resources are still allocated to the tools of military force. And because of this, the increases in spending on defense and prevention, as important as they are, amount to deckchair arranging on the ship of security spending. The goal of rebalanced security, as a budgetary matter, remains to be realized.

Stephen M. Walt. Foreign Policy, 16 November 2009.
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/11/16/building_on_2_blunders_the_dubious_case_for_counterinsurgency

Editor’s Comment

Walt makes a fundamental strategic point. The Bush wars involved operational and grand strategic errors, so why institutionalize a shift in defense planning that in effect has the U.S. military prepare for more strategic errors by our leadership? Why not opt to correct the error? It is really an elemental point of strategy: Don’t compound error!

I understand how military professionals who have been ordered to take on foolish strategic missions might feel that counterinsurgency theory is an attractive way out of their tactical and operational dilemmas. But there is really no excuse for civilian leaders, including Sec Def Gates, chasing the mirage of COIN as if it were an answer for our current problems dealing with the consequences of a disastrous Bush national security strategy. Change the strategy and there will be no need for investments in COIN!

Adam L. Silverman. Sic Semper Tyrannis, 12 November 2009.
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2009/11/conceptualizations-of-insurgency-and-its-effects-on-the-counterinsurgency-policy-process.html

Excerpt:

Given the reality that the US faces in Afghanistan; the historic lack of functional centralized government, exceedingly high number of societal elements, many of which are geographically isolated or semi-isolated, the illegitimacy of the current Afghan government, and the fact that groups we are fighting are not all insurgents makes successfully reaching the COIN end state of tethering Afghan society back to the Afghan state very, very difficult. The debate on the use of COIN really needs to be focused in on this difficult set of Afghan circumstances and whether they allow any chance for a positive counterinsurgency outcome.

Karl W. Eikenberry. The The New York Times has published two cables authored by the U.S. Ambassador to Kabul addressed to Secretary of State Clinton. The first is dated 06 November 2009 and is entitled “COIN Strategy: Civilian Concerns”. The second is dated 09 November 2009 and is entitled “Looking Beyond Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan”.
http://documents.nytimes.com/eikenberry-s-memos-on-the-strategy-in-afghanistan

Editor’s Comment:

Quibble: COIN is a tactic, not a strategy. Non-quibble: Wars are rarely decided at the tactical level.

Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason. Military Review, November/December 2009.
http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20091231_art004.pdf

Excerpts:

By misunderstanding the basic nature of the enemy, the United States is fghting the wrong war again, just as we did in Vietnam. It is hard to defeat an enemy you do not understand.

Elections don’t make democracies; democracies make elections.

As Jeffrey Record … notes, “the fundamental political obstacle to an enduring American success in Vietnam [was] a politically illegitimate, militarily feckless, and thoroughly corrupted South Vietnamese client regime.” Substitute the word “Afghanistan” for the words “South Vietnam” in these quotations and the descriptions apply precisely to today’s government in Kabul. Like Afghanistan, South Vietnam at the national level was a massively corrupt collection of self-interested warlords, many of them deeply implicated in the proftable opium trade, with almost nonexistent legitimacy outside the capital city. The purely military gains achieved at such terrible cost in our nation’s blood and treasure in Vietnam never came close to exhausting the enemy’s manpower pool or his will to fght, and simply could not be sus-
tained politically by a venal and incompetent set of dysfunctional state institutions where self-interest
was the order of the day.

No Pashtun would ever identify himself by his province, where we are attempting to impose external governance. Rural Pashtuns thus have no perceivable political interest in this keystone of international military and political effort in Afghanistan.

“Extending the reach of the central government” is precisely the wrong strategy in Afghanistan because it is exactly what the rural people do not want. The level of coercive social change that would be required to actually implement this radical social revolution in Afghanistan is beyond our national means.

Gilles Dorronsoro. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, November 2009.
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/fixing_failed_strategy.pdf

Excerpt:

…the International Coalition, with its limited resources and diminishing popular support, should focus on its core interests: preventing the Taliban from retaking Afghan cities, avoiding the risk that al-Qaeda would try to reestablish sanctuaries there, pursue a more aggressive counterinsurgency strategy in the North, and reallocate its civilian aid resources to places where the insurgency is still weak.

Editor’s Comment

Some would say that Pashtunistan is already a nation which can’t yet fully establish itself as a state (although there is already considerable local governance, both Pashtun tribal and Taliban.) Presently Punjabi (Pakistani) and US/NATO military intervention prevent the establishment of a state.

Dorronsoro’s Afghan war strategy would seem to be a step in moving the Pashtunistan national cause to within a decade or so of success. Of course, the cities of Kandahar and Jalalabad would have to fall under Pashtunistan governance eventually, even if Western forces resisted for some years.

Gian P. Gentile. New York Times, 31 October 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/opinion/31iht-edgentile.html?_r=1

Excerpt:

History shows that occupation by foreign armies with the intent of changing occupied societies does not work and ends up costing considerable blood and treasure.

The notion that if only an army gets a few more troops, with different and better generals, then within a few years it can defeat a multi-faceted insurgency set in the middle of civil war, is not supported by an honest reading of history.

Algeria, Vietnam and Iraq show this to be the case.

Paul McGeough. The Age, 24 October 2009. from an address at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/afghan-insurgency-given-new-life-by-their-enemies-20091023-hd58.html

Excerpts:

Afghans do want governance – they want good governance. But they have been ripped off every time it’s been within their grasp. And the worst rip-off has been in the last eight years, because democracy and good governance were the gifts offered by the West – by governments that supposedly knew about these things.

In their refusal to back Kabul or the Coalition, Afghans are not saying yea or neigh on the Taliban in isolation – the call they make as they try to go about their daily existence, is on the credibility of the Taliban as compared with that of the Karzai government and the Coalition.

It’s too late for McChrystal to make protecting the most-threatened sections of the Afghan population the key objective, because both the Kabul Government and the coalition lack credibility in the eyes of the people. In the absence of any significant Afghan government presence, much beyond Kabul, it is American military and aid workers – and those from several other coalition countries – that are seen as the face of government and as keepers of the cash, of which there is not enough and which takes forever to translate into meaningful development.

Selig S. Harrison. The Nation, 21 October 2009.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091109/harrison

Excerpt:

…to offset Pakistan’s support for the Taliban, replace the present “Af-Pak” strategy with a broader regional strategy that encourages India, Iran, Russia, China and Tajikistan–all of which oppose a Taliban takeover–to play a more active role in shaping Afghanistan’s economic and political future and in setting the terms for a gradual US-NATO withdrawal.

James Kitfield. National Journal, 17 October 2009.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/nj_20091017_2858.php

Christopher M. Lehman. Boston Globe, 14 October 2009.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/10/14/keeping_the_aircraft_carrier_fleet_afloat?mode=PF

Editor’s Comment:
It has been several decades since simply counting the numbers of weapon systems or platforms has been anything like a reliable measure of military power. In a modern military effective power is achieved by the combination of well-trained men and women, good weapon systems and platforms, advanced communications, allocation of forces, and controls and, of course, guided missiles and munitions.

Christopher Lehman’s op-ed in defense of the eleven carrier fleet (Boston Globe 14 October 2009) fails to mention, let alone assess, any of these crucial aspects of the modern Navy. Nor does he mention the numerous expeditionary strike groups, surface action groups, and missile armed submarines that also project American power around the globe. And he does not mention that a term of preference in today’s Navy is “network-centric.”

Although the number of platforms (ships) in today’s Navy is considerably fewer than during the Cold War, the firepower on today’s collection of ships has more than doubled, and is still growing. And that is only a starting place for measuring the effective power of the Navy. Reducing the size of the carrier fleet by one or two flattops is not a high risk proposition for the national security of the United States.

References:

http://www.comw.org/wordpress/dsr/osd-considers-nine-carrier-fleet
http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/navy_network.htm
http://budgetinsight.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/possible-savings-from-decreasing-the-aircraft-carrier-battle-fleet/

Reader Comment from a letter to the Boston Globe:

Michael Lind. Salon, 13 October 2009.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/10/13/nuclear_weapons/index.html

Editor’s Comment:
Even if the nuclear abolition movement grows in power and is able to convince the governments of the U.S., France, and Great Britain to move toward abolishing their nuclear weaponry, there is little chance that other great powers such as Russia, China, and India will follow suit — not as long as any of those powers can imagine a conventional war against the U.S. (or against other countries with powerful conventional forces.) Unfortunately, there is no way to separate the problems of nuclear weaponry from the problems of international power politics and war. You can work hard to deny the connection in your mind, but in the end denial won’t help the cause of making the world safer. If there is to be really deep nuclear disarmament it must be in concert with conventional disarmament and new agency for international security.

Stephen Abott. Budget Insight, 08 October 2009.
http://budgetinsight.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/possible-savings-from-decreasing-the-aircraft-carrier-battle-fleet/

For background and an assessment of the carrier “requirement” see http://www.comw.org/wordpress/dsr/osd-considers-nine-carrier-fleet

Gian P. Gentile. Parameters, Autumn 2009.
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/USAWC/Parameters/09autumn/gentile.pdf

Excerpt:

Population-centric COIN may be a reasonable operational method to use in certain circumstances, but it is not a strategy.

Editor’s Comment:

Agreed! COIN is a collection of tactics. What is missing in Afghanistan is a strategy with any credible chance of success … despite the lip-service to political solutions.

Mackenzie Eaglen and Jim Talent. Armed Forces Journal, October 2009.
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2009/10/4262271

Editor’s Comment: Before launching into their polemic calling for even more investments in the military sector (on top of 40+% real growth in the last decade for the Pentagon base budget) Eaglen and Talent usefully point out that the forthcoming QDR is, in a formal sense, based on the last Bush administration National Security Strategy, now three years old.

Logically, if the QDR is to serve as an expression of how military planning, program and posture align with national security and defense strategy, then our current schedule for the production of these documents is seriously out of sync with political cycles. It is reasonable to expect that an incoming administration, such as Obama’s, might require eighteen months to review and craft a revision of the National Security Strategy.

Starting with a revised National Security Strategy (The White House) appearing in June 2011 a schedule for the derivative documents might then be:

National Defense Strategy (SecDef’s office) – January 2012
National Military Strategy (Joint Chiefs) – June 2012
Quadrennial Defense Review (SecDef’s office) – June 2012

Note the logic of this sequencing: The White House sets any considered changes in the broad strategy (the National Security Strategy) eighteen months after coming into office. The Secretary of Defense then leads the process of determining and announcing six months later refinements to the National Defense Strategy. The Joint Chiefs have six additional months to refine their National Military Strategy document which is published the same month as the DoD’s Quadrennial Defense Review (which puts the strategy, defense planning/posture and budget all together.)

Lewis Carroll. (English Logician, Mathematician, Photographer and Novelist, especially remembered for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. 1832-1898)

Justin Kelly and Michael James Brennan. Strategic Studies Institute, Army War College, 16 September 2009.
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/download.cfm?q=939

Excerpt:

Recent western military exploits in Iraq, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and East
Timor, all represent, if not strategic failure, at least failures of strategy. The question we need to ask
ourselves is whether this weakness is endemic or at least partially a result of our own theoretical failings by
allowing operational art to escape from any reasonable delimitation and, by so doing, subvert the role of
strategy and hide the need for a strategic art?

Editor’s Comment:

In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, there emerged in this country a revisionist narrative of “meddling” by civilian leaders such as Johnson and McNamara which had “prevented” the military from winning the war. Although this narrative was almost entirely counter factual, it has had enough resonance in a nation deeply troubled by the war’s outcome that subsequent civilian leadership has opted to effectively “hand-off” wars to their generals and step back from responsibility for key strategic decisions.

Generals are, for the most part, skilled operational practitioners, but only sometimes do they have well-developed strategic skills or wisdom. As the authors point out, handing-off responsibility for strategic decisions to the generals is an error in the practice of grand strategy… and we should not be surprised with how often our subsequent wars have gone badly.

My hope is that President Obama will read this essay before making his decision about what to do next in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Matthew P. Hoh. 10 September 2009. Hosted on the Commonwealth Institute Website.
http://www.comw.org/warreport/fulltext/HohResignationLetter.pdf

Excerpt:

The Pashtun insurgency, which is composed of multiple, seemingly infinite, local groups, is fed by what is perceived by the Pashtun people as a continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun land, culture, traditions and religion by internal and external enemies. The U.S. and NATO presence and operations in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified. In both the RC East and South, I have observed the the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul.

Reader Comment:

I am now an old man. In the 60/70s I served under John P Vann in Vietnam for a total of over 2 years. I have read Mr Hoh´s letter with great interest. It reminds me of the integrity, compassion and patriotism that Mr Vann displayed, in words and deeds over and again. There was nobody even close, except Ron Ziegler and General Krulak on a good day. Time and pride wore him down, nobody can in the end escape the green machine. For Mr Vann it worked on his vanity until he became Mr B52. And if it could wear down Mr Vann, nobody is safe. I do hope that Mr Hoh gets listened to, that he is supported and that we get out of a war in Afghanistan that we do want to win and that we do not presently have the courage to get out of. ~ Ola Kristofersson

Greg Grant. DoD Buzz, 26 August 2009.
http://www.dodbuzz.com/2009/08/26/osd-considers-chopping-flattop/

Editor’s comment

The Project on Defense Alternatives recommended in 2007 reducing the carrier fleet by two saying “reform along these lines would allow a 9-carrier, 8-wing fleet to surge ‘five plus one’ for crisis response. In 2010, these six carriers, fully utilized and equipped with weapons now being fielded or procured, should be able to strike well over twice as many targets per day as the five that deployed for Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

Inside Defense reports (Jason Sherman, 06 August 2009) keys dates for completion of the QDR 2010:

Phase II (July to November)

August 14 – Services submit 2011 FYDPs to OSD

September 01 – Comptroller and Capabilities Assessment and Program Evaluation Directorate ‘begin critique’ of the POM

October 15 – QDR issue teams finalize policy papers

November 06 – QDR issue teams finalize summary briefs

December 04 – completion of program and budget review and DoD FY-11 budget request

Phase III

November 15 – beginning of QDR document drafting and “intensive pre-release outreach”

January – Sec. Gates approves final draft before transmitting it to Congress in February

Antonie Boessenkool. Defense News, 03 August 2009.

excerpt:

“They must, they absolutely must, enter the fleet on time and on budget,” [Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations] said, stand­ing before a green-painted F-35C at Lockheed Martin’s assembly plant here. “If we don’t get this airplane on time, we’re going to realize a gap in the number of airplanes we take to sea.” Roughead said the Navy may ex­tend the service life of its older F/A-18 models as it waits.

Editor’s comment:

The Navy could relax its delivery schedule for the new fighter by five years or so if it downsizes its carrier fleet (without sacrificing strategic power projection) as recommended by the Project on Defense Alternatives. This would free up newer F/A-18s to replace older ones in the Navy’s remaining active air fleet.

See also: “No Navy Fighter Gap: PAE” — http://www.dodbuzz.com/2009/05/05/no-navy-fighter-gap/

by Charles Knight

Last fall I attended a seminar at MIT entitled “Analytical Tools for the Next Quadrennial Defense Review” given by senior analyst who had worked on several QDRs. The QDR is an every-four-years Pentagon study mandated by Congress and meant to review how closely the defense posture and its supporting budget fits with the national strategy. The seminar presenter spent an hour detailing the analytical methods of those who worked on the “force structuring” and policy studies that provide the basis for the QDR review process. That process is ongoing this year in preparation for the release of fourth QDR in early 2010.

After the presentation a former member of the National Security Council who happened to be seated to my right turned to me and said, “[The QDR] seems like a fraud.”

More recently Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), Chairman of the House Armed Services air and land forces subcommittee, referred to the QDR as a “PR stunt” and a “PR exercise” (as reported by Marjorie Censer, Inside the Pentagon, 18 June 2009.) Rep. Abercrombie then went on to offer a less than precise elaboration, saying, “It’s all Thunderbird stuff, booms and all that.”

I can not be all that sure what the former National Security Council member or Rep. Abercrombie meant by their characterizations of the QDR. But, having followed all four QDRs fairly closely, I can make an educated guess at what they are getting at.

Congress has intended that through the QDR the Pentagon will make a serious attempt to reconcile the national defense strategy to the defense posture of the services and from that presumed point of congruence reconcile it to the defense budget. Policy analysts frequently complain that strategy, posture and budget are dangerously out of whack. If the QDR process addresses this problem and then does the analytical and policy work required for making real advances toward reconciliation then we can judge that it is meeting its stated purpose. If it results in a public document that uses rhetorical flourish in order to mask disjuncture of ends and means and to perpetuate prior posture and budget directions, then it is something like a ‘fraud’ or ‘PR exercise.’

The unfolding 2010 QDR process gives us a good opportunity to look for evidence of either real reconciliation or PR exercise. A few pieces of evidence:

[This site will take note of what other evidence emerges pertaining to the question of whether the QDR is 'a fraud', 'a PR stunt', or a sincere effort to reconcile posture and budget with strategy? I invite your comments and viewpoints on this important question.]

Jon Soucy. American Forces Press Service, 29 July 2009.

Editor’s comment: The Project on Defense Alternatives has recommended that the USAF reduce its tactical combat fleet by two wing equivalents. This reduction would allow for a considerable number of tactical aircraft to move over the the Air National Guard thus improving its fleet age composition. If the Air Guard still needs to replace old F-16s in the period 2015-2025 it should do so by a staged buy of the latest block F-16 C/D. Transition to the Joint Strike Fighter could begin in the 2020s.

Charles V. Peña. antiwar.com, 29 July 2009.
http://original.antiwar.com/pena/2009/07/28/nuclear-disarmament/

Excerpt:

…a country can be a party to the NPT but decide that abiding by the treaty is no longer in its best interests and withdraw, which is exactly what North Korea chose to do in January 2003, claiming, “A dangerous situation where our nation’s sovereignty and our state’s security are being seriously violated is prevailing on the Korean Peninsula due to the U.S. vicious hostile policy towards the DPRK.” Given that North Korea had been named a member of the axis of evil a year earlier and the United States was on the verge of invading Iraq (a non-nuclear power), it’s perfectly understandable that the regime in Pyongyang might believe it was in the DPRK’s “supreme interests” to no longer formally agree to be a nonnuclear power, i.e., a pushover for regime change.

The NPT is not a universal treaty. There are 193 countries in the world, but not all of them are signatories to the NPT. The result is the so-called “D3 problem,” or the de facto nuclear states: India, Pakistan, and Israel. These countries were never part of the NPT regime and were thus able to develop nuclear weapons, because they are under no obligation to abide by the NPT. And it’s not lost on the rest of the world – particularly the Muslim world – that the United States doesn’t hold Israel to the same standard as Iran. Indeed, like previous presidents, Obama refuses to even acknowledge that Israel is a nuclear power.

…the NPT does not exist in a vacuum. It’s impossible to ignore U.S. foreign policy, particularly a proclivity for military intervention supported by Democrats and Republicans alike. Since the end of the Cold War marked by the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the United States has engaged in nine major military operations, but only one of those – Operation Enduring Freedom – was unambiguously in response to a direct threat to the United States. This is a powerful incentive for countries such as Iran and North Korea to acquire nuclear weapons as the only reliable deterrent against U.S. invasion. As long as the United States continues to have an interventionist foreign policy (and the Obama administration has not overseen a sea change in U.S. foreign policy), it will be next to impossible to prevent proliferation.

Winslow Wheeler. National Journal blog, 27 July 2009.

WorldPublicOpion.org. 23 July 2009.

from WorldPublicOpinion.org 23 July 2009

Editor’s comment: It is striking that almost 80% of Pakistanis want NATO and the US out of Afghanistan. This is evidence that they do not view the US/NATO counter-terror, counterinsurgency and stabilization campaign in Afghanistan as a likely solution to their troubles in Pakistan, but rather as a cause of those troubles.

This is empirical evidence that US strategists should consider. Perhaps military intervention into a foreign country is a significant contributing factor to unrest and instability in that country and the region? How often do we hear of US national strategists seriously considering that factor in their strategic planning?

Gordon Adams, Budget Insight, 14 July 2009

Defense News reports (John T. Bennett, “DoD to Launch 2011 Budget Planning,” 6 July 2009) that the services will receive their 2011 budget-building guidance later this month — well ahead of the programmatic priority setting which the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) is supposed to provide. The QDR is scheduled to appear in public in February of 2010, but the Pentagon’s internal QDR process could reconcile program and budget sometime in the fall of 2009.

Expert observers, quoted in the article, believe that Secretary Gates has already set the budget-related parameters of this QDR and is confident enough of the outcome of the QDR process to jump the Pentagon and the services ahead of the formal QDR process to begin detailing the 2011 budget this summer. Others note that revised budget guidances are to be expected.

Amy Belasco, Congressional Research Service, 2 July 2009 (printable .pdf file).

P. Michael Phillips. Parameters, Summer 2009.
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/09summer/phillips.pdf

Excerpt:

The state as described in this article differs greatly from the ideal imagined in the Westphalian paradigm. States do not universally enjoy unrestricted sovereignty. Nor are they equal. In fact, the sovereignty of a great number of the states in the international system is merely ascriptive.

Because these imperfect conditions have more or less existed since long before 1648, it may be more helpful to think of any observed chaos in the international system as the natural condition, rather than a decline into disorder. If the system is not melting down, are so-called nonstate actors as signifcant for the long-term as they appear to be for the present?

The return of multipolarity is a long-overdue blessing in disguise. Shaped properly, the rise of other credible powers may permit Washington to more widely distribute the responsibility of collective security among a more diverse and culturally relevant audience. Shepherding—not resisting—the emergence of multiple spheres of influence within a reconceptualized normative framework, one moving beyond simple Wilsonian idealism, has potential to co-opt potential troublemakers and might offer a better vehicle for expanding global prosperity by increasing the number of empowered stakeholders. Such a system might, over time, evolve into a practical security council of states reflecting not ancient martial relationships, but in-
stead the distribution of actual global power. Most importantly, the United States would be empowered to devise a transition away from the draining role of world policeman to one more befitting a global ombudsman. This shift can at once conserve American power for the long haul while insulating the nation from ultimate responsibility. Finally, such a system would more effectively highlight state troublemakers and allow the United States to focus its finite resources on real rather than imagined threats.

The QDR’s governance structure is topped by the Defense Senior Leaders Conference (DSLC) made up of the nine combatant commanders, the service chiefs and the civilian Pentagon leaders.

Below the DSLC is the Deputy’s Advisory Working Group (DAWG), which is made up of the service secretaries, the vice chiefs and various under secretaries of defense; combatant commanders and others are also invited. Reporting to the DAWG are the QDR stakeholders, according to the documents. They include service, Office of the Secretary of Defense and combatant commander three-star representatives.

Michele Flournoy, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, has overall responsibility for bringing the Secretary of Defense a document he will sign and send on to Congress and the President.

Jennifer Zakriski, Director of Force Development within the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy serves as the “QDR chief of staff.”

The process of creating the QDR is coordinated by an “analysis and integration cell” headed by David Ochmanek, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Development. He works within Flournoy’s policy office.

Working with Ochmanek on “integration” are Eric Coulter, Deputy Director of Strategic Assessments and Irregular Warfare of the Program Analysis and Evaluation directorate. Lisa Disbrow, Deputy Director for Force Management at the Joint Staff, and Rear Adm. Philip Davidson, Deputy Director for Strategy and Policy from the Joint Staff’s J-5 directorate, serve as liaison with the Joint Staff.

There are five “issue teams”:

· Irregular Warfare. Garry Reid, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Combating Terrorism, heads this team. He is joined by Timothy Bright, Director of PA&E’s irregular warfare division; and Maj. Gen. William Troy, Vice Director for Force Structure, Resources and Assessments at the Joint Staff’s J-8 directorate.

· High-end Threats. Amanda Dory, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Strategy, heads this team. She is joined by Matthew Schaffer, Deputy Director of Conventional Forces at PA&E, and Brig. Gen. Lori Robinson, Deputy Director for Force Application at the Joint Staff’s J-8 directorate.

· Civil Support. Christine Wormuth, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs, heads this team. She is joined by Dennis Evans, Director of the Strategic Defensive and Space Programs division at PA&E, and Scott Norwood, Deputy Director for Global Security Affairs at the Joint Staff’s J-5 directorate.

· Global Posture. Janine Davidson, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Plans, heads this team. She is joined by Krysty Kolesar, Director of PA&E’s Force and Infrastructure Cost Analysis Division. Lisa Disbrow and Rear Adm. Davidson will represent the Joint Staff.

· Cost Drivers. Kevin Scheid, Deputy Comptroller, heads this team. He is joined by Jerry Pannullo, Director of the Economic and Manpower Analysis Division at PA&E, and Brig. Gen. Glenn Walters, Deputy Director for Resources and Acquisition at the Joint Staff’s J-8 directorate.

The services are to provide one subject matter expert for each issue area team and the analysis and integration team.

Timing. The policy review within the Pentagon was scheduled to be completed by the end of June. In the fall there will be a “budget and execution review”.

[above information from Kate Brannen reporting for Inside the Pentagon, 14 April 2009]

Defense Secretary Gates has also set up a “red team” to ensure “we’re not the prisoners of a bureaucratic group-think of people who have done this work forever.” This team will be headed by Andrew Marshall, Director of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, and Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, chief of the U.S. Joint Forces Command.

[John T. Bennett, “Marshall, Mattis To Lead QDR 'Red Team'”, Defense News, 15 May 2009.]

Graham Usher. The Nation, 20 May 2009.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090608/usher

Excerpt:

There is a hole at the heart of Af-Pak. It’s called peace between Pakistan and India. And no amount of aid, “decided shifts” or apocalyptic warnings will fill it.

Charles Knight, Carl Conetta, and James P. McGovern. Minuteman Media, 1 January 2009.

excerpt:

Any adjustment in national security planning is bound to be controversial – and it should be. But we can no longer afford to shy away from that controversy. Our current circumstance demands that we enter into a broad and deep discussion about national strategic priorities, including security priorities. And this necessarily entails looking behind the curtain that shields the defense budget from more serious scrutiny.

In 1995, the U.S. Congress established the Commission on Roles and Missions (CORM) to reevaluate selected roles and missions issues of each military Service. Comprised of both civilian and retired senior military officers and supported by a military and civilian staff, the CORM recommended a quadrennial strategic review which led to the congressional requirement for a Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).

The QDR primary requirement is to “conduct a comprehensive review [of DoD]…with a view toward determining and expressing the defense strategy of the United States and establishing a defense program for the next 20 years” (Title 10 USC Sec 118). The first QDR report was issued in 1997 followed by subsequent reviews in 2001 and 2006. Since the release of the first report, the legislative language requiring the QDR has changed slightly, but the essence of the review remains the same.

Key tasks that DoD must (by law) submit results on to Congress in the next QDR report include:
(b1) to delineate a national defense strategy consistent with the most recent National Security Strategy prescribed by the President pursuant to section 108 of the National Security Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C. 404a);
(b2) to define sufficient force structure, force modernization plans, infrastructure, budget plan, and other elements of the defense program of the United States associated with that national defense strategy that would be required to execute successfully the full range of missions called for in that national defense strategy;
(b3) to identify (A) the budget plan that would be required to provide sufficient resources to execute successfully the full range of missions called for in that national defense strategy at a low-to-moderate level of risk, and (B) any additional resources (beyond those programmed in the current future-years defense program) required to achieve such a level of risk; and
(b4) to make recommendations that are not constrained to comply with the budget submitted to Congress by the President pursuant to section 1105 of title 31.

Assessment of Risk. – The assessment of risk for the purposes of subsection (b) shall be undertaken by the Secretary of Defense in consultation with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That assessment shall define the nature and magnitude of the political, strategic, and military risks associated with executing the missions called for under the national defense strategy.

excerpted from Terms of Reference: Strengthening the Next QDR (2010) Through Timely and Relevant Analysis, October 9, 2008 for MORS Workshop, 12-15 January 2009.

Carl Conetta. Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo #42, 02 August 2007.

At the time of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, less than 8 percent of America’s combat aircraft – USAF, USN, and USMC – had the ability to deliver guided weapons autonomously. Since then, this capability has generalized throughout the combat air fleets, including large bombers. (The capacity of America’s fleet of 97 mission-authorized bombers to precision munitions makes it, in this regard, the equivalent of more than 7 wings of tactical aircraft.)

Although the Government Accountability Office (among others) have challenged the most ambitious claims made for precision-guided munitions (PGMs), a non-controversial conclusion is that they allow a five- to eight-fold reduction in bomb expenditure to achieve a target effect similar to that achieved by the best non-guided methods. (The advantage may be somewhat less for area targets.) Also contributing to increased combat capability since 1991 has been the generalization of night-fighting and all-weather capabilities throughout the combat air fleets and significant improvements in target acquisition and data fusion and sharing.

In light of the advances in US air attack capability, it is not surprising that the 2003 Iraq war involved only one-third as many combat aircraft sorties as its predecessor and less than nine percent as many air-delivered munitions. Notably: the proportion of air-delivered munitions that were precision-guided grew from 8 percent to 68 percent. The number of fighters and bombers deployed by the United States declined from approximately 1,100 for the 1991 Gulf War to 655 for the 2003 war. And deployed aircraft were worked much harder in 1991 than in 2003: about 1.3 sorties per day per plane versus 0.9.

Looking forward to 2010, the advances in US guided-weapon attack capability will continue as the combat air fleets add all-weather munitions of substantially longer range, smaller size, and greater accuracy with more numerous and “smarter” submunitions. Over the next five years we will see the introduction of (or more general use of) extended-range, jam-resistant JDAMs, the Sensor Fused Weapon, the Wind-Corrected Munitions Dispenser, Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-off Missiles, and the Low-Cost Autonomous Attack System. Perhaps most significant is the introduction of the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) which, as noted by Defense Industry Daily, will “dramatically increase the strike capability of every combat aircraft in the US inventory.” Indeed, theoretically, the SDB will increase the PGM carrying capacity of America’s combat air fleets five-fold – from 8,000 weapons to 40,000.

In 2010, America’s combat aircraft will possess twenty times the interdiction capability — on average and unit for unit, as their 1990 counterparts. Currently planned US air forces will be smaller, however – resulting in an aggregate capability somewhat less than 15 times greater than in 1990.

By comparison, traditional conventional adversaries have not nearly kept pace with US developments. Already in 1997, the Defense Intelligence Agency had noted a 20 percent reduction in armor threats. More generally: the United States moved from spending only 80 percent as much on defense as its potential adversaries did in 1985 to spending 250 percent as much in 2001. Since then the gap has widened further. Today the United States accounts for more than 60 percent of all military modernization spending worldwide, while Russia and China, for instance, together account for less than ten percent.

The dramatic growth in the capability of US combat aircraft does not imply that a commensurate reduction in fleet size is advisable, however. Quantity of platforms remains an important factor in that flexibility increases with the size of air fleets and risk declines. The United States would not want to put its “eggs” in too few baskets. Still, some significant reduction from the presently planned fleet size is possible.

How much is enough? We can gain some insight from America’s recent wars. During the past 15 years, the United States deployed air armada’s of various sizes to fight its wars: 1,100 combat aircraft in 1991; 300 for Operation Allied Force (plus 200 allied); approximately 250 for Operation Enduring Freedom; and 655 for the main combat phase of Operation Enduring Freedom. The average number of combat sorties flown each day varied widely: 1,400 for Desert Storm, 140 for Allied Force, 82 per day for the first 78 days of Enduring Freedom, and 700 for Iraqi Freedom.

Given current capabilities and those new ones now emerging and being introduced, the United States might handle comparable contingencies with combat air packages comprising 200 to 500 fighters and bombers. With a future all-service force of 1,920 mission-assigned fighters and bombers, the United States could surge as many as 1,250 combat aircraft at one time – a sufficient number to handle multiple war and deterrence tasks.

Carl Conetta. Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo #42, 02 August 2007.

Among US air power assets those that are carrier-based have a special role. Where access to land bases is limited, aircraft carriers can bring tactical air power within reach of enemy bastions. Together with other sea-based strike assets and long-range bombers, carriers can help overcome the anti-access challenge. But this fact should not exclude them from consideration for reduction. In fact, the United States has more of this asset than it reasonably requires. And, it is important to remember that sea-based air power is relatively vulnerable and expensive. Indeed, sortie for sortie, it costs more than twice as much as land-based tactical air – all things considered.

America’s requirement for big-deck aircraft carriers can be divided into a “surge” requirement for crisis response and a peacetime requirement for continuous forward presence. Relevant to the surge requirement is the actual experience of recent wars. Three or four aircraft carriers were directly engaged in Afghan operations at any one time during October-December 2001. During the first phase of the 2003 Iraq war, four or five were engaged. During the 1999 Kosovo war, one.

In none of these wars were the engaged carriers employed to their fullest, however. For instance, during the first month of Operation Iraqi Freedom, naval fighters flew an average of 0.8 sorties per day. They are capable of flying two, at least – and the Navy claims they can do more, in a pinch. Looking to the future: The target attack capability of each air wing will increase significantly with the addition of smaller, longer-range, and more accurate PGMs. In 2005 Senate testimony, then Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Vernon Clark, asserted that the number of targets that a carrier air wing could attack per day would increase from 700 to more than 1,000 by 2010 – having already risen substantially from 200 in 1997. Implicit in this is the option to reduce the overall number of carriers and wings.

In its FY 2007 budget, the Navy asserts that, given an 11 carrier fleet, it can surge six carriers for war within 30 days and another within the next 60 days. This, as a result of its new Fleet Response Plan (FRP). This implies an emergency or “surge” utilization rate of 63 percent. A somewhat higher rate could be achieved through changes in homeporting arrangements, rotations of crews, further reorganization of maintenance schedules, and reduced utilization of carriers for simple presence missions. Some reform along these lines would allow a 9-carrier, 8-wing fleet to surge “five plus one” for crisis response. In 2010, these six carriers, fully utilized and equipped with weapons now being fielded or procured, should be able to strike well over twice as many targets per day as the five that deployed for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Supplementing the future offshore strike capability of US carriers would be the long-range attack capability of America’s bomber force – able in the future to carry five times as many PGMs as today (on average). Also supplementing carrier power would be the rest of the Navy’s surface fleet and the four Trident submarines that have been reconfigured for conventional missions. The surface fleet is equipped with approximately 8,000 Vertical Launch Systems, which can fire Tomahawk missiles – as can the Tridents. The Navy is building its stock of conventional land-attack Tomahawks up towards a total of 6,000 or so. (Approximately 800 were used in Operation Iraqi Freedom.) Finally, the Navy will have mini-carriers to call on as well, once the new class of LHA(R) amphibious assault ships are commissioned. Among other aircraft, these will carry 20 F-35s.
With only eight active and one reserve big-deck carriers in the fleet, the Navy would not be able to keep more than 2.5 of them continuously “on station” during peacetime – even given recent FRP innovations. However, homeporting one more overseas would increase this number, as would a crew rotation scheme. At any rate, peacetime naval presence abroad need not center on aircraft carriers. This much is recognized in the Navy’s new Global Concept of Operations, which allows for greater flexibility in assembling naval groups. Today, these include not only Carrier Battle Groups but also Expeditionary Strike Groups (built around amphibious assault ships), Surface Strike Groups (built around surface combatants), and independent operations by the Trident cruise-missile subs. These smaller, more varied, and more numerous groups allow for greater flexibility and more thorough coverage.

Charles Knight. Project on Defense Alternatives Commentary, July 2007.

excerpt:

It is my best guess that we won’t see an Army/Marine Corps invasion of Iran or Pakistan or North Korea. If the ‘new center’ in Washington was seriously considering interventions abroad that might require deploying up to 3 million troops, they would need to start providing basic training to a significant portion of Americans between the ages of 18 and 28 — and that, of course, means conscription.

Carl Conetta. PDA Briefing Memo #36, 10 February 2006.

Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt. New York Times, 20 April 2003.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/20/world/nation-war-strategic-shift-pentagon-expects-long-term-access-key-iraq-bases.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print

Excerpts:

Regardless of how quickly the Americans reverse the buildup of the last several months, it is plain that since Sept. 11, 2001, there has been a concerted diplomatic and military effort to win permission for United States forces to operate from the formerly Communist nations of Eastern Europe, across the Mediterranean, throughout the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, and across Central Asia, from the periphery of Russia to Pakistan’s ports on the Indian Ocean.

It is a swath of Western influence not seen for generations.

In Afghanistan and in Iraq, the American military will do all it can to minimize the size of its forces, and there will probably never be an announcement of permanent stationing of troops.

Permanent access is all that is required, not permanent basing, officials say.

Carl Conetta. PDA Research Monograph #6, 30 January 2002. (printable .pdf file)
http://www.comw.org/pda/0201strangevic.pdf

Excerpt:

In sum: for a counter-terrorism operation, Enduring Freedom left an enormous strategic wake.
Indeed, its inadvertent effects over-shadow its intended ones.

Instead of stability, Enduring Freedom has produced residual management tasks of uncertain proportion. The Bush administration now proposes to handle these through a substantial additional investment of strategic capital — notably, an expansion of overt military presence, assistance, and activism in central and south Asia.

C. E. (Chuck) Myers, Jr. Proceedings, November, 1995.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/95myers.pdf

Excerpt:

[the defense] community has again embarked upon an expensive design and construction exercise focused on ‘form,’ which historically breeds powerful technology-business coalitions and political constituencies that become virtually unstoppable.

Editor’s comment:

The JAST became the JSF and Myers was right about the rest.