Christopher Preble and Charles Knight. Huffington Post, 20 January 2012.
http://defensealt.org/ysCbHQ

Excerpt:

Balance depends on what you are standing on. With respect to our physical security, the United States is blessed with continental peace and a dearth of powerful enemies. Our military is the best-trained, best-led, and best-equipped in the world. It is our unstable finances and our sluggish economy that make us vulnerable to stumbling.

Unfortunately, the new strategy does not fully appreciate our strengths, nor does it fully address our weaknesses. In the end, it does not achieve Eisenhower’s vaunted balance.

__________________________________________________

Stephen M. Walt. Foreign Policy, 01 December, 2011.
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/12/01/a_bandwagon_for_offshore_balancing

Excerpt:

…offshore balancing is the right strategy even when our coffers are full, provided that no peer competitors are threatening to dominate key strategic regions. Even during good times, it makes no sense to take on unnecessary burdens or to allow allies to free-ride on Uncle Sam’s hubristic desire to be the “indispensable nation” in almost every corner of the world. In other words, offshore balancing isn’t just a strategy for hard times; it is also the best available strategy in a world where the United States is the strongest power, prone to trigger unnecessary antagonism, and vulnerable to being dragged into unnecessary wars.

Paula G. Thornhill. CNN, 23 November 2011.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/23/opinion/thornhill-defense-cuts/index.html

Excerpt:

The nation’s leadership needs a Plan B so that a heroic assumption — or hope — about the unlikelihood of future wars does not inadvertently lead to strategic disaster. This is harder than it seems. Plan B would allow more flexibility to meet what could go wrong in the strategic environment rather than just making budget cuts.

Editor’s Comment:

Plan B is to maintain a good ‘strategic reserve.’ As neo-conservatives like to point out the United States spends only 4.5% of its GDP on its military. If new threats pinch, the U.S. can easily ramp up spending and engage its still considerable industrial and knowledge base. The problem this country faces with a reconstitution strategy is lack of political will. Civilian leaders are loathe to ask the American people to sacrifice. A robust National Guard and Reserve force that is not abused by frequent deployments to unnecessary wars and a societal expectation to pay a tax surcharge in times of national emergency are the fundamentals of what this country needs to be strategically prepared while maintaining a small standing peacetime force. With such a strategic plan the U.S. can be well provisioned for any threat.

Matthew Leatherman. Bloomberg Government, 21 November 2011.
http://defensealt.org/veAUPs

Kelsey Hartigan. Democracy Arsenal, 10 November 2011.
http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2011/11/if-you-want-peace-stop-clamoring-for-war.html

Excerpt:

If Romney believes that he can waltz into the Oval Office, give a few rough and tough speeches and suddenly Iran will open its doors to IAEA inspectors, well, he’s in for a rude awakening.

Belligerent rhetoric won’t solve the situation with Iran. In fact, most experts will tell you that it will make it worse. Threats of military action, or worse, actual military action, will only play into the hands of Iran’s hardliners…If a U.S. military presence was going to convince Iran to cooperate, I would have thought it would have happened by now.

Charles Knight. Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo #51, 25 October 2011.
http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1110bm51.pdf

Excerpt:

…modest changes to U.S. military strategy and global posture implemented over the next ten years can reliably offer deficit-reducing savings from the Pentagon budget ranging from $73 billion a year to $118 billion a year.

To achieve the savings only requires the application of different means to attaining strategic goals. That is precisely what any good strategy does when conditions change.

Jeff Jacoby. Boston Globe, 22 June 2011.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/06/22/the_worlds_best_policeman/

Excerpt:

…with great power come great responsibilities, and sometimes one of those responsibilities is to destroy monsters: to take down tyrants who victimize the innocent and flout the rules of civilization. If neighborhoods and cities need policing, it stands to reason the world does too. And just as local criminals thrive when cops look the other way, so do criminals on the world stage.

Our world needs a policeman. And whether most Americans like it or not, only their indispensable nation is fit for the job.

Editor’s Comment:

When three-quarters of Americans reject a role of global policeman for the U.S. perhaps they understand something fundamental about policing that Jeff Jacoby doesn’t. A police force without oversight by a judiciary and a guiding body of law is surely a formula for tyranny.

Jacoby would never endorse tyranny, but the avocation to be global policemen by White House occupants who are elected by and responsible to only 10% of the world’s people is a decision to be a vigilante on the global stage. Consider that Americans would be up in arms if China or Russia took it upon themselves to be global vigilantes.

For the leaders of the U.S. to so gladly to take up this role only serves to delay the day when we have capable international judicial and policing institutions. If our leaders attempt to think even a few years into the future it should be clear to them that the practice of vigilantism does not serve American interests.

[A version of this comment was published as a letter to the editor in the Boston Globe, 28 June 2011.]

Sandra Erwin. National Defense , 10 June 2011.
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/lists/posts/post.aspx?ID=441

Excerpt:

Not only are there internal disagreements within the Pentagon and the Obama administration over what the military services will be doing in the future, but factions within Congress also will be pushing individual agendas. “In Congress, you have 535 individuals and every one of them thinks they’re in charge,” O’Keefe said. “If you don’t have some benchmark to work with to start the discussion,” the Pentagon will lose control over what gets cut in future budgets.

“If there is no strategic framework, that is what will happen: The process takes over,” said O’Keefe. Defense leaders should come up with a reasonable strategic framework as early as possible that they can sell to Congress, he said. “Absent that, it is going to be the programmers and bean counters driving the train to meet a number.”

A coherent message from the Defense Department is “missing right now,” said John J. Hamre, president of CSIS and former deputy defense secretary.

“What are we really trying to plan for, as a Defense Department, that is good for 20 years?” he asked. “Are we going to get the hell out of these wars and never fight them again? What are we preparing for?” he added. “That, I think, is the work for the next six months.”

There has to be a sense of urgency about articulating a plan for the future of the U.S. military, because increasingly the American public is losing patience with seemingly endless wars and gridlock over how to move forward, Hamre said

Steps Toward Defense Budget Discipline, a Hill briefing sponsored by Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Project on Defense Alternatives, 7 June 2011, video by the Stimson Center. Featuring: Amy Belasco, Carl Conetta, Benjamin Friedman, Matthew Leatherman, Laura Peterson and Winslow Wheeler.

Sandra Erwin. National Defense Magazine, 22 November 2010.
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=255

Excerpt:

“The Defense Department’s biggest weakness is its budget strategy: the absence of strategic choice,” says Gordon Adams, American University professor who authored the defense recommendations in the Domenici-Rivlin proposal that was presented by former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and White House Budget Director under Clinton, Alice Rivlin.

Cutting the defense budget should not be about doing the same with less, Adams says. The reaction to the Simpson-Bowles report, which takes aim at many big-ticket weapon programs and calls for work force reductions, was predictable. Every targeted program or agency, as was seen recently with U.S. Joint Forces Command, is making a case that it is essential to national security, and its supporters already are mobilizing lobbyists and advocacy groups.

The smarter approach would be for the Obama administration and Congress to agree to a scaled-back military strategy, says Adams. “At the end of the day, it’s about policy makers restraining their impulse to use the military in the reckless way it’s been used in the past 20 years,” he says.

18 November 2010

Dear Co-chairman Bowles and Co-chairman Simpson:

We are writing to you as experts in national security and defense economics to convey our views on the national security implications of the Commission’s work and especially the need for achieving responsible reductions in military spending. In this regard, we appreciate the initiative you have taken in your 10 November 2010 draft proposal to the Commission. It begins a necessary process of serious reflection, debate, and action.

The vitality of our economy is the cornerstone of our nation’s strength. We share the Commission’s desire to bring our financial house into order. Doing so is not merely a question of economics. Reducing the national debt is also a national security imperative.

To date, the Obama administration has exempted the Defense Department from any budget reductions. This is short-sighted: It makes it more difficult to accomplish the task of restoring our economic strength, which is the underpinning of our military power.

As the rest of the nation labors to reduce its debt burden, the current plan is to boost the base DOD budget by 10 percent in real terms over the next decade. This would come on top of the nearly 52 percent real increase in base military spending since 1998. (When war costs are included the increase has been much greater: 95 percent.)

We appreciate Secretary Gates’ efforts to reform the Pentagon’s business and acquisition practices. However, even if his reforms fulfill their promise, the current plan does not translate them into budgetary savings that contribute to solving our deficit problem. Their explicit aim is to free funds for other uses inside the Pentagon. This is not good enough.

Granting defense a special dispensation puts at risk the entire deficit reduction effort. Defense spending today constitutes over 55 percent of discretionary spending and 23 percent of the federal budget. An exemption for defense not only undermines the broader call for fiscal responsibility, but also makes overall budget restraint much harder as a practical economic and political matter.

We need not put our economic power at risk in this way. Today the United States possesses a wide margin of global military superiority. The defense budget can bear significant reduction without compromising our essential security.

We recognize that larger military adversaries may rise to face us in the future. But the best hedge against this possibility is vigilance and a vibrant economy supporting a military able to adapt to new challenges as they emerge.

We can achieve greater defense economy today in several ways, all of which we urge you to consider seriously. We need to be more realistic in the goals we set for our armed forces and more selective in our choices regarding their use abroad. We should focus our military on core security goals and on those current and emerging threats that most directly affect us.

We also need to be more judicious in our choice of security instruments when dealing with international challenges. Our armed forces are a uniquely expensive asset and for some tasks no other instrument will do. For many challenges, however, the military is not the most cost-effective choice. We can achieve greater efficiency today without diminishing our security by better discriminating between vital, desirable, and unnecessary military missions and capabilities.

There is a variety of specific options that would produce savings, some of which we describe below. The important point, however, is a firm commitment to seek savings through a reassessment of our defense strategy, our global posture, and our means of producing and managing military power.

■ Since the end of the Cold War, we have required our military to prepare for and conduct more types of missions in more places around the world. The Pentagon’s task list now includes not only preventive war, regime change, and nation building, but also vague efforts to “shape the strategic environment” and stem the emergence of threats. It is time to prune some of these missions and restore an emphasis on defense and deterrence.

■ U.S. combat power dramatically exceeds that of any plausible combination of conventional adversaries. To cite just one example, Secretary Gates has observed that the U.S. Navy is today as capable as the next 13 navies combined, most of which are operated by our allies. We can safely save by trimming our current margin of superiority.

■ America’s permanent peacetime military presence abroad is largely a legacy of the Cold War. It can be reduced without undermining the essential security of the United States or its allies.

■ The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have revealed the limits of military power. Avoiding these types of operation globally would allow us to roll back the recent increase in the size of our Army and Marine Corps.

■ The Pentagon’s acquisition process has repeatedly failed, routinely delivering weapons and equipment late, over cost, and less capable than promised. Some of the most expensive systems correspond to threats that are least prominent today and unlikely to regain prominence soon. In these cases, savings can be safely realized by cancelling, delaying, or reducing procurement or by seeking less costly alternatives.

■ Recent efforts to reform Defense Department financial management and acquisition practices must be strengthened. And we must impose budget discipline to trim service redundancies and streamline command, support systems, and infrastructure.

Change along these lines is bound to be controversial. Budget reductions are never easy – no less for defense than in any area of government. However, fiscal realities call on us to strike a new balance between investing in military power and attending to the fundamentals of national strength on which our true power rests. We can achieve safe savings in defense if we are willing to rethink how we produce military power and how, why, and where we put it to use.

Sincerely,

This letter reflects the opinions of the individual signatories. Institutions are listed for identification purposes only. The letter is the result of a joint effort by The Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy and the Project on Defense Alternatives.

Thomas P.M Barnett. China Security, October 2010.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/1010Barnett.pdf

Excerpt:

In sum, ending China’s free-riding is arguably more important for long-term system-wide stability than continuing to deter China’s military invasion of Taiwan. As globalization’s networks continue to expand at a rapid pace, America’s ability to play sole Leviathan to the system naturally degrades dramatically. That means, while the likelihood of China’s military invasion of Taiwan dissipates with each passing year, the likelihood of America’s “imperial exhaustion” most certainly surpasses it in strategic importance in the near term.

History will judge US strategists most severely if our choice to maintain “access” to East Asia by triggering a regional arms race precludes our ability to draw China into strategic co-management of this era of pervasively extending globalization—without a doubt America’s greatest strategic achievement. I cannot fault the AirSea Battle Concept as an operational capability designed to keep us in the East Asian balancing “game.” But my fear is that it will—primarily by default and somewhat by “blue” ambition—serve America badly in a strategic sense, absent a proactive political and military engagement effort to balance its negative impact on the most important bilateral relationship of the modern globalization era.

Editor’s Comment:

Barnett alerts us to a prospective instance when leading with military capability is likely to be a disservice to strategic interests.

Jason Sherman, Inside Defense, 26 July 2010.

A bipartisan independent review of the Obama administration’s 20-year blueprint for the Defense Department calls for increasing the size of the Navy to a 346-ship fleet and increasing the U.S. military’s posture in the Western Pacific to counter China’s growing influence in the region, according to a draft report of the Independent Quadrennial Defense Review Panel.

InsideDefense.com obtained a draft copy of the report titled “The QDR in Perspective: Meeting America’s National Security Needs in the 21st Century.”

The 20-member blue-ribbon panel — co-chaired by former Defense Secretary William Perry and Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser to President George W. Bush — also finds a significant increase in funding is needed to bolster capabilities necessary to counter anti-access challenges, strengthen homeland defense; and to deal with cyber threats.

The panel’s report argues that a centerpiece of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review — a force-planning construct that downplayed the significance of preparing to fight and win two, nearly simultaneous major wars, a bedrock of defense planning since 1993, in order to prepare U.S. forces to deal with a wider set of possible contingencies — is unreliable. Instead, the independent panel recommends the Pentagon adopt force levels required by analysis conducted 17 years ago.

The “panel recommends the force structure be sized, at a minimum, at the end strength outlined in the 1993 Bottom-Up Review,” an assessment prepared by then-Defense Secretary Les Aspin, which Perry then worked to implement during his 1994 to 1997 term as secretary. “We further recommend the department’s [weapon system] inventory be thoroughly recapitalized and modernized,” states the draft report.

Funding to pay for these capabilities, as well as to recapitalize equipment consumed in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, will require resources beyond the $100 billion efficiency savings recently directed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, according to the report.

The “panel believes that substantial additional resources will be required to modernize the force. Although there is a cost to recapitalizing the military, there is also a price to be paid for not recapitalizing, one that in the long run would be much greater.”

Tasked by Congress — and composed of members appointed by lawmakers and Gates — the panel’s report delves into nearly every dimension of the U.S. military enterprise — from personnel policy to weapons acquisition to defense policy formulation — and offers an “explicit warning” about the shape of U.S. weaponry after a nearly a decade of persistent conflict.

“The aging of the inventories and equipment used by the services, the decline in the size of the Navy, and the growing stress on the force means that a train wreck is coming in the areas of personnel, acquisition, and force structure,” states the draft report.

The draft document argues that the Pentagon’s force-structure plans “will not provide sufficient capacity” to deal with a major domestic catastrophe while also conducting contingency operations abroad. The panel also asserts that the recently established U.S. Cyber Command should be prepared to assist civilian authorities in defending this domain “beyond” the Defense Department’s current role, to support civilian agencies.

The Pentagon’s 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review did not include a force-planning construct that explicitly quantifies the number and type of contingencies for which the U.S. military must prepare, removing a formula the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines have relied on since the end of the Cold War to justify their force structures and their investment plans, an omission the independent panel laments.

The Pentagon’s 1993 Bottom-Up Review, the first major assessment of the the U.S. military’s needs after the fall of the Berlin Wall, advanced a requirement to fight and win two major-theater wars nearly simultaneously, a construct that was incorporated in the 1997, 2001 and 2006 QDRs.

“The 2010 QDR, however, did not endorse any metric for determining the size and shape of U.S. forces,” states the independent panel’s draft report. Rather, it put diverse, overlapping scenarios, including long-duration stability operations and the defense of the homeland, on par with major regional conflicts when assessing the adequacy of U.S. forces.”

The current size of U.S. ground forces “is close enough to being correct,” according to the draft report.

In addition, the panel argues that the Army is “living off the capital accumulated” during the Reagan administration. “The useful life of that equipment is running out; and, as a result, the inventory is old and in need of recapitalization,” states the draft report, which calls for inventory replacement on a one-for-one basis “with an upward adjustment in the number of naval vessels and certain air and space assets.”

A larger Navy and Air Force, according to the panel, is needed to protect U.S. interests in the Pacific region.

“The force structure in the Asia-Pacific needs to be increased,” states the draft report. “The United States must be fully present in the Asia-Pacific region, to protect American lives and territory, ensure the free flow of commerce, maintain stability, and defend our allies in the region. A robust U.S. force structure, one that is largely rooted in maritime strategy and includes other necessary capabilities, will be essential.”

The panel advances recommendations to reform the structure and organization of both Congress and the executive branch in order to improve oversight of national security matters. The panel also advances suggestions for the Defense and State departments to shore up “institutional weaknesses of the existing security assistance programs and framework.”

Capitol Visitors Center, 11 June 2010.

Report of the Sustainable Defense Task Force. 11 June 2010.
full report: http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1006SDTFreport.pdf
executive summary: http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/SDTFreportexsum.pdf

Excerpt:

Putting America’s defense establishment on a more sustainable path may require curbing some of our commitments abroad, adopting more realistic military goals, or putting greater emphasis on more cost-effective instruments of power.

C-SPAN video of the report release briefing hosted by Rep. Barney Frank, U.S. Capitol Visitors Center, 11 June 2010.

Photos of the report release briefing, U.S. Capitol Visitors Center, 11 June 2010.

Report of the Afghanistan Study Group, June 2010.
http://www.afghanistanstudygroup.org/?page_id=27

Excerpt:

The bottom line is clear: Our vital interests in Afghanistan are limited and military victory is not the key to achieving them.

On the contrary, waging a lengthy counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan may well do more to aid Taliban recruiting than to dismantle the group, help spread conflict further into Pakistan, unify radical groups that might otherwise be quarreling amongst themselves, threaten the long-term health of the U.S. economy, and prevent the U.S. government from turning its full attention to other pressing problems.

Laura A. Hall. Budget Insight, 27 May 2010.
http://thewillandthewallet.squarespace.com/blog/2010/5/27/obamas-national-security-strategy-how-will-it-be-managed.html

Excerpt:

On the military side, no clear prioritization of missions. As in the QDR, the NSS provides no priorities among military missions, but repeats a long shopping list that could drive force structure and budget expectations even higher than they are now.

Christopher Ford. Remarks presented to a side event at the 2010 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, New Paradigms Forum, Hudson Institute, 20 May 2010.
http://www.newparadigmsforum.com/NPFtestsite/?p=250

Excerpt:

… as present-day disarmament debates shift from a focus specifically upon nuclear weaponry to a broader focus upon full-spectrum military asymmetry, the disarmament discourse is characterized by competition between two conceptual paradigms that are quite incompatible even when their respective adherents seem to agree upon the importance of nuclear disarmament.

Let’s explore this a bit. Even as it seeks to pander to the conventional wisdom of the disarmament movement by attempting to purchase nonproliferation cooperation with concessions on disarmament, the Obama Administration seems to have embraced – as did the Bush Administration before it, though far less emphatically and flamboyantly – a vision of nuclear reductions and potential future disarmament profoundly at odds with much of the conceptual framework that underpins this conventional wisdom. Fundamentally, to the extent that there can be said to be a vision of disarmament progress prevalent among U.S. policy making elites, it is one that assumes and values military asymmetries favoring the United States.

It is not merely that the Obama Administration sees the development of improved nuclear weapons production capabilities as being essential to American reductions, as part of a strategy of substituting potential weapons for actual ones as America’s strategic “hedge” against future problems. It is in fact that non-nuclear U.S. military advantages are embraced as a way to facilitate reducing, or perhaps even replacing, U.S. reliance upon nuclear weapons: developing PGS or other technologies to supplant nuclear weapons in some missions previously thought to require them; improving BMD against proliferation threats; and relying upon robust conventional power-projection capabilities to maintain the solidity of trans-oceanic alliances that have traditionally relied in part upon forward-deployed U.S. nuclear weapons. No one in today’s White House would admit as much, of course, but this agenda – spelled out with some candor in the new 2010 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) – owes as much to the doctrinal vision of President Bush’s 2001 NPR as it does to the ideology of the nuclear abolition movement.

At issue is a real clash between conceptual paradigms about the nature of the global security environment and how best to maintain international peace and security within it. On the one hand, there is a paradigm that one might call “peer-group multilateralism.” It is an ethic of collective action among equals in which countries come together through multilateral (and preferably global and universal) institutions in order to address common challenges. This is a profoundly democratic vision, at least with respect to relations between countries. (Actual democracy for real populations of human beings is an entirely different question, alas.) In it, no one has any particular special privileges, and no one suffers “discrimination” except when misbehavior brings upon miscreants the wrath of the international community – expressed, of course, through formal and collective means. This multilateralist and quasi-democratic paradigm is reflected, for instance, in the consensus negotiation procedures of the CD, and in the one-country-one-vote formula of the U.N. General Assembly. Even where bodies are structured so as to permit slightly more effective decision-making through smaller size, these principles may yet be seen in provisions for rotating states through seats on the IAEA Board of Governors or in the non-permanent ranks of the U.N. Security Council.

In this paradigm, asymmetry of power is philosophically offensive. To prevent or undermine such asymmetry, majoritarian procedures – if not indeed consensus rules – are designed and expected to impede traditional “power politics” and to enable all to participate more or less equally in decision outcomes. Action against common threats is understood as a collective movement both expressing and predicated upon international solidarity, and upon all countries’ shared and axiomatically coequal role in preserving peace and security. By the same token, action not pursued with such a collective or at least majoritarian imprimatur is improper action. In a sense, therefore, the multilateral process is felt to create outcome legitimacy.

On the other end of this conceptual continuum lies a paradigm that one might call the “predominant actor model.” By this account – the essential features of which are evident in the thinking of multiple U.S. administrations, transcending party identification – multilateral institutions operating on the basis of formal equality among near-peers provide an important but sometimes an inadequate means of addressing challenges to international peace and security. It is not necessarily that such institutions fall always or entirely down on the job, but that they are ill-equipped to handle, on their own, the full panoply of international threats that might arise (e.g., on account of collective action problems, the high capital costs and high returns to experience in global power-projection capabilities, or psycho-political dynamics of risk-aversion or anti-militarist fashion).

According to this second model, the security system needs a predominant actor capable of shouldering disproportionate burdens and leading the community’s reaction to pressing challenges, and around whom serious systemic responses to some of the gravest challenges can crystallize – particularly, though not exclusively, where the employment of military force is at issue. In effect, this model presumes that international security is to some extent a public good that will be, in economic terms, under-produced, to the detriment of all, if a predominant actor does not sometimes take the reins. In contrast to “peer-group multilateralism,” outcome legitimacy is, in this model, basically process-exogenous, in that certain steps are assumed to be necessary for the preservation of global order and other critical values of the system, and there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the strongest player stepping in to ensure that these steps are taken. (Indeed, if other actors seem unable to do what is needed, it would be wrong for the predominant power not to intervene.) Other states’ actual consent to such initiative is desirable, but secondary; the key point is that what is needed actually gets done.

The United States tends to see itself as playing this predominant role, with its military power and capabilities underpinning the stability of the present global order and system of economic relations. Having inherited from Britain the baton of securing global sea lanes vital to international commerce – and having added to this a broad modern array of global security responsibilities, ranging from providing the power-projection “muscle” behind humanitarian intervention to fighting nuclear weapons proliferation, and from providing security reassurances to far-flung allies to countering access-denial strategies in outer space – Washington sees itself as having a vital role in the international system precisely on account of its disproportionate military power.

One model thus sees military asymmetry as profoundly subversive of global peace and security, and ultimately regards its erosion as being a requirement for the full success of nuclear disarmament. The other model regards a degree of asymmetry, at least in the right hands, as being essential to global order irrespective of whether or not nuclear weapons exist – and perhaps even especially valuable in preparing to confront the challenges of some hypothetical future in which major conflicts can no longer be “deterred” by nuclear weapons because such devices have been eliminated.

Editor’s Comment:

This is an important challenge to the nuclear disarmament “community”.

Christopher Ford, a nonproliferation official in the second Bush administration, is a consistent critic of “universalism” in international affairs and of the what he considers to be “faux” democratic process in international security institutions and fora. Whatever the validity of his doubts in these regard, what must not be denied by disarmament advocates is the reality that the “predominant actors” in the U.S. security establishment, both military and civilian, firmly believe that the U.S. should be the predominant actor on the world stage and are therefore predisposed to share most of Christopher Ford’s doubts (and perhaps allergy) about universalism and inter-national democratic practice.

More about these important issues later.

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.

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.

Alissa J. Rubin. New York Times. 31 October 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/weekinreview/01RUBIN.html

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 Rogers. Open Democracy, 29 October 2009. Hosted on the Commondreams website.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/03-6

Excerpt:

If there is a way ahead, it rests not on short-term calculations about troop numbers but on a larger reassessment by the Barack Obama administration of the entire US security posture in the middle east and southwest Asia. This will have to do more than crisis-manage the dire problems inherited from George W Bush; what is needed is no less than a move beyond military-led thinking to an integrated understanding of what security in the 21st century actually is.

Caroline Wadhams and Colin Cookman. Foreign Policy, 15 October 2009.
http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/10/15/why_the_us_shouldnt_put_all_its_security_eggs_in_the_al_qaeda_basket

James Vega. The Democratic Strategist, 12 October 2009.
http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/_memos/tds_SM_Vega_Afg.pdf

Gian P. Gentile. Parameters, Autumn 2009.
http://www.public.navy.mil/usff/documents/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.

General Stanley McChrystal, Commander ISAF, speech on Afghanistan to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 01 October 2009.
http://www.iiss.org/EasysiteWeb/getresource.axd?AssetID=31537&type=full&servicetype=Attachment

Frank G. Hoffman. Armed Forces Journal, October 2009.
http://www.afji.com/2009/10/4198658

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.

Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, 14 September 2009.
http://www.realisticforeignpolicy.org/archives/2009/09/letter_to_presi.php

Malou Innocent and Ted Galen Carpenter. Cato Institute, 14 September 2009.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/wtpapers/escaping-graveyard-empires-strategy-exit-afghanistan.pdf

Marc Lynch. The New Foreign Policy.com, 07 September 2009.
http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/09/07/civil_wars_literature_and_iraq

Chuck Hagel. The Washington Post, 03 September 2009. Posted on the Atlantic Council Website.
http://acus.org/new_atlanticist/limits-force

Patrick Porter. Kings of War, 20 August 2009.
http://kingsofwar.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/some-thoughts-on-obamas-speech/

Barack Obama. Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention at the Phoenix Convention Center, 17 August 2009.
http://www.cfr.org/publication/20038/obamas_speech_on_afghanistan_and_pakistan_august_2009.html

an expert online panel, National Journal National Security Expert Blog, 10 August 2009.

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.

Daryl G. Kimball. Remarks at the First Annual Strategic Deterrence Symposium, U.S. Strategic Command, 29 July 2010.
http://www.armscontrol.org/events/STRATCOMRemarks

Excerpt:

Without significant reductions in the role and number of U.S. (and Russian) nuclear weapons, and without U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, our ability to harness the international support necessary to prevent nuclear terrorism and prevent new nuclear weapon states will be greatly diminished.

Without these reductions and the test ban, many non-nuclear-weapon states will become less willing to agree to more effective IAEA safeguards, tighter constraints on the spread of sensitive nuclear fuel cycle technologies, tougher sanctions against violators, and improved interdiction efforts, among other steps.

In recent years, a growing number of national security experts and leaders, including President Barack Obama, have come to recognize the importance of dramatically changing the roles and missions of U.S. nuclear weapons in ways that:

* minimize the salience and number of nuclear weapons;
* advance concrete nuclear risk reduction steps consistent with the United States nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) disarmament obligations; and
* reinforce our commitment to eventually achieve a world without of nuclear weapons.

We can and should limit the role of our nuclear weapons to a core deterrence mission: maintaining a sufficient, survivable nuclear force for the sole purpose of deterring the use of nuclear weapons by another country against the United States or its allies. With secure forces, deterring a nuclear strike requires far fewer nuclear warheads and delivery systems than the current counterforce-oriented nuclear arsenal.

Thus, if the United States were to adopt a policy that explicitly limits the purpose of nuclear weapons to preventing their use by others, then it could drastically reduce its nuclear inventory to a total of no more than 1,000 weapons of all types—strategic, non-strategic, deployed, and nondeployed—within the next few years.

James Cahill. Small Wars Journal, 27 July 2009 (printable .pdf file).

Michael Cohen. World Politics Review, 22 July 2009

David Bromwich. TomDispatch.com, 21 July 2009.

W. Patrick Lang. Sic Semper Tyrannis, 11 July 2009.
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2009/07/coins-siren-song.html

Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., Foreign Affairs, July/August 2009.

Comment:

Andrew Krepinevich (“The Pentagon’s Wasting Assets,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2009) writes that “the military foundations of the United States’ global dominance are eroding,” compromising the nation’s “unmatched ability to project power worldwide.” He would have us believe that unless reversed, this trend will produce dire consequences.

The problem with Krepinevich’s argument lies in its assumptions that “global dominance” is possible and that global power projection by the United States offers the most effective way of ensuring international peace and stability. Recent events call both assumptions into question.

Krepinevich claims that U.S. dominance, expressed through the projection of hard power, has produced a “long record of military successes.” Yet this contention is difficult to sustain given episodes such as those experienced by the U.S. military in Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq (both in 1991 and since 2003) — not to mention the devastation of 9/11. It would be more accurate to say that force — even when wielded by the seemingly strong against the nominally weak — continues to be an exceedingly uncertain instrument. The United States’ penchant for projecting power has created as many problems as it has solved. Genuinely decisive outcomes remain rare, costs often far exceed expectations, and unintended and unwelcome consequences are legion.

A decade ago, some argued that the key to achieving permanent dominance could be found in “transformation,” a radical reconfiguration of the U.S. military meant to exploit the potential of advanced information technology. Krepinevich writes, disapprovingly, that this proposed new American way of war “faced stiff resistance” from dissidents within the military and that “the price for such willful ignorance can be steep.” Actually, it was the price of taking the bogus promises of transformation seriously that proved steep, as the debacle in Iraq amply demonstrated. These days, with transformation retaining about as much credibility as “unregulated markets,” the skeptics have come off looking a lot better than the proponents.

In fact, the pursuit of military dominance is an illusion, the principal effect of which is to distort strategic judgment by persuading policymakers that they have at hand the means to make short work of history’s complexities. Krepinevich argues that there is “a compelling need to develop new ways of creating military advantage.” As much as I respect his general acumen, however, on this point he is fundamentally wrong. The real need is to wean the United States from its infatuation with military power and come to a more modest appreciation of what force can and cannot do.

~ Andrew J. Bacevich, Professor of International Relations and History, Boston University

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65233/andrew-j-bacevich/the-limits-of-power-projection

Sarah Meyer. Index Research, 01 June 2009.
http://indexresearch.blogspot.com/2009/06/index-on-war-in-pakistan-may-2009.html

Russell W. Glenn. Small Wars Journal, 02 March 2009.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/mag/docs-temp/188-glenn.pdf

Robert M. Gates, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2009. Posted on the Commonwealth Institute Website (printable .pdf file).

Shawn Brimely. Parameters, Winter 2008-2009. Posted on the Commonwealth Institute Website (printable .pdf file).

Eugene Gholz and Daryl G. Press. presented at America and the World, a Tobin Project Conference at Airlie, 14-16 November 2008. Hosted on the Commonwealth Institute website.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/08Gholz&Press.pdf

Excerpt:

… an “over-the-horizon” approach would protect vital US oil interests without incurring the serious costs of the current strategy. It would counter the traditional military threats to Gulf oil interests as effectively as the current strategy, and it would do a better job mitigating the more serious future threats in the Gulf: terrorism against oil infrastructure and domestic instability within oil-producing countries. Furthermore, an over-the-horizon approach would bring US policy in line with American values.

Donald F. Herr. Center for International Policy, September 2008.
http://www.ciponline.org/images/uploads/publications/Mil_USFP_IPR0908.pdf

Barry R. Posen. testimony before the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, 15 July 2008.
http://web.mit.edu/ssp/people/posen/A_Grand_Strategy_of_Restraint_and_Renewal_testimony_for_congress_july_15.pdf

Excerpt:

The United States is a powerful country. Nevertheless, it is not as powerful as the foreign policy establishment believes. Political, military, and economic costs are mounting from U.S. actions abroad. At the same time, the U.S. has paid too little attention to problems at home. Over the last decade Americans became accustomed to a
standard of living that could only be financed on borrowed money. U.S. foreign policy elites have become accustomed to an activist grand strategy that they have increasingly funded on borrowed money as well. The days of easy money are over. During these years, the U.S. failed to make critical investments in infrastructure and human capital. The U.S. is destined for a period of belt tightening; it must raise taxes and cut spending. The quantities involved seem so massive that it is difficult to see how DOD can escape being at least one of the bill payers. We should seize this opportunity to re-conceptualize U.S. grand strategy from top to bottom.

Jeffrey G. Lewis. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July/August 2008.
http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2008/minimum_deterrence_7552

Excerpt:

… some military officials have come close to suggesting that nuclear weapons meet no unique military need. In 2007, for example, Gen. James Cartwright, then-commander of U.S. Strategic Command, testified before the House Armed Services Committee that conventional capabilities have largely replaced nuclear capabilities, with the single exception of global reach against fleeting targets. If true, then the credibility of deterrence rests very heavily on the mere existence of nuclear weapons and their inherent potential for use, rather than on plans, postures, or declaratory policies.

Jeffrey W. Taliaferro. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, San Francisco Hilton, San Francisco, CA, 26-29 March 2008.
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/5/0/8/0/pages250803/p250803-1.php

Michael C. Desch. International Security, Winter 2007/2008.
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2008.32.3.7

Fabius Maximus. 23 November 2007.
http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2007/11/23/the-essential-4gw-reading-list-chapter-3-david-kilcullen/

Richard Betts. Foreign Affairs, November/December 2007. Hosted on the RealClearPolitics Website.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/11/a_disciplined_defense.html

Charlie Edwards. Demos, November 2007. Posted on the Commonwealth Institute Website (printable .pdf file).

Barry Posen. The American Interest online, Nov-Dec 2007.
http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=331

Excerpt:

Iraq should therefore be seen not as a singular debacle, but as a harbinger of costs to come. There is enough capacity and motivation out in the world to increase significantly the costs of any U.S. effort to manage global politics directly. Public support for this policy may wane before profligacy so diminishes U.S. power that it becomes unsustainable.

Charles A. Kupchan and Peter L. Trubowitz. International Security, Fall 2007. Posted on the Commonwealth Institute Website (printable .pdf file).

Andrew R. Hoehn, Adam Grissom, David Ochmanek, David A. Shlapak, and Alan J. Vick. RAND Monograph, May 2007.

Mel Goodman. Foreign Policy in Focus, February 2004. Posted on the Commonwealth Institute Website (printable .pdf file).

Stephen Biddle. Strategic Studies Institute, Army War College, November 2002.
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ssi/afghan.pdf