After Iraq, a new U.S. military model
It’s been called the most dramatic shift in U.S. military power since World War II. But it’s not the widely anticipated drawdown of American combat forces in Iraq.While debate rages over the future of America’s military role in Iraq, another massive U.S. military reorganization — largely overlooked but perhaps even more significant over the long term — is already under way from Northeast Asia to West Africa. And it offers valuable lessons as President George W. Bush considers his next steps in Iraq.
Under the 10-year plan, announced by Bush two years ago, the Pentagon is giving up more than one- third of its overseas military bases and buildings and bringing home 70,000 troops and 100,000 of their family members from major bases in Germany and South Korea.
To help transform the military into a faster, more flexible force, troops will instead rotate through smaller, strategically located “forward operating sites,” such as air bases in Bulgaria, Romania and Kyrgyzstan.
At the same time, the Pentagon is creating a network of austere “cooperative security locations” — remote runways and warehouses stockpiled with equipment, in places like Senegal, Ghana and Uganda. According to General James Jones, who recently retired as head of U.S. European Command — which now covers most of Africa — these “lily pads” will allow American forces to leapfrog quickly to future crisis zones.
This seems like a good idea to me. How, and when, to use American military power in the future will continue to be dominant issues and flexibility will be key.
It seems to me that our first objective would be to deny any active enemies control over any territory. This is basically what the first stage of the Afghanistan operation was, and was certainly successful. The current Ethiopian attacks on Islamists in the Sudan also fits this type of campaign. Depending on one’s view of Iran’s current activities, one could also make a claim that an operation of this nature should be launched against that country (I think Iran is pretty clearly an enemy, whether it is ‘active’ or not probably depends on how you view its involvement in a proxy war in Iraq.)
The second objective would be to stabilize nations and regions, helping friendly (or at least not hostile) entities gain a monopoly on force in chaotic regions. In short, nation building. How exactly to do that, and what means to employ is of course very controversial. The simplest way would be to find the biggest bully on the block, make him tougher and hope that he remains friendly. This method was widely employed in the cold war, and continues to a lesser extent today (Pakistan and Saudi Arabia come to mind.) While this is relatively easy (and comparatively cheap) it is at odds with our professed principles. Beyond the principled objection, it doesn’t always work as well as we would like, sometimes the chosen bully decides not to remain on our side (Castro) and other times manages to inflame the populace and be replaced by someone else, usually inimical to the U.S. (the Shah in Iran.) At it’s core, the problem with this method is that totalitarian states are naturally inimical to democratic ones, the very existence of democratic nations is an attack on the legitimacy of a totalitarian government. While this can be papered over in the short to medium term, in the long run it is not a stable solution.
That leaves us with trying to establish democracies in these unstable regions, such as we are trying in Iraq and Afghanistan presently. The first problem here is that we really don’t know how to accomplish this task. When looking at the history of democracies it is hard to determine what it is that makes some succeed and others fail. Economic growth seems to be connected, but whether it is the cause or the effect is less clear. Obviously, we can point to individual elements that are required for a democracy to function, but what needs to happen first is much less clear. Despite the formidable difficulties of such a task, I maintain that it is something we have to learn if we want lasting peace and security. Further, learning will probably only be achieved by doing (and yes, failing at times.)
The other quandary in using American power is how to deal with adversaries who are not currently active aggressors. Iran (if it doesn’t fit into the previous model) and North Korea are good examples here. This is where preemptive and preventative war become considerations. Preemptive war is fairly well understood, and typically agreed upon as legitimate, but given overwhelming U.S. power something that isn’t likely to play into to many scenarios (a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan is the only one I can think of.) Most of the dangerous scenarios we can think of won’t have a clear signal of intent before they manifest fully which limits the utility of this model.
>Preventative war, which attempts to get rid of threats well before they become imminent has its major downsides of course. As the Iraq war shows, judging existing capabilities, let alone future intentions, is a difficult undertaking. Also, since no clear causus belli exists actions of this nature will have much less support, both at home and internationally. Given the extremely serious nature of the threats such a policy is designed to prevent, I don’t think it wise to simply toss away this notion, but greater thought needs to be given on how and when this should be applied.
