IN JUNE 1950 President Harry S. Truman had on his desk, or perhaps already in a drawer, a copy of one of the most insightful and important documents of modern times. National Security Council Report 68 laid out a clear statement of the global threat that the Soviet Union and international communism posed to America and our way of life. It also advocated a major rearmament and the commitment of the nation to a very long-term program of opposing and destroying communism. Truman, however, had not endorsed NSC 68 and was, in fact, skeptical of its call for rearmament and global commitment. The United States had just finished demobilizing from the last war, and Truman was fixated on domestic problems—principally the American economy, which, evidence suggested, was about to enter a serious slump. But in the early morning of June 25, 1950, North Korean forces rolled south, crushing the South Korean troops in their way, seizing Seoul, and pressing a hastily assembled American force back to a defensive line around our last major port on the Korean peninsula, Pusan. Even as American forces were establishing the Pusan Perimeter, Truman was asking Congress for substantial increases in the defense budget—and was receiving them. Thereafter, with inevitable ups and downs, NSC 68 remained the blueprint for America’s conduct of and victory in the forty-year Cold War. Many are now comparing the despicable attack of September 11 with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. We should hope, instead, that the real analogy will be to the surprise attack of June 25, 1950. In response to Pearl Harbor, we mobilized the entire nation for a massive effort aimed at the destruction of two clear, visible, and vulnerable foes. In the grand scheme of history, the effort was intense, but short. Within four years we had won and begun to demobilize with breakneck speed. By the late 1940s the armed forces were once again weak and vulnerable, and America was once again turning inward, despite the warnings of a few prescient thinkers who saw the danger. In response to the Korean attack, however, we did more than simply prepare for the relatively brief fight in northeast Asia. We committed ourselves to a prolonged struggle against a global ideological threat, we sustained an unprecedented level of peacetime military strength, and we fought in numerous large and small engagements ranging from full-scale wars to peacekeeping operations for four decades. No one expected a rapid victory and few policymakers doubted the importance of the fight. That is the model we must look to today. The first and most important thing that NSC 68 did was identify the threat clearly and develop a coherent grand strategy using all of the resources of the nation to respond to it. It then evaluated the resources that would be needed and made a powerful argument on behalf of an unprecedented increase in the peacetime defense budget. It also addressed the strengths and weaknesses of American society in light of the Communist threat, which, the authors wisely recognized, went beyond the bounds of military danger. The analogies to the current situation are clear. The threat today is twofold. First, there is a real ideological challenge to America posed by those who see in the United States the epitome of everything they hate about the modern world. They hate our wealth and comfort, but even more our pervasive culture that so erodes the traditional values they hold dear. Those who are committed to this ideology, including almost all anti-American terrorists, cannot be reasoned with or negotiated with—they can only be deterred or destroyed. Second, the very disorder and violence that pervades much of the Islamic world is itself a danger to America. For too long we have lamented the existence of “failing states” without recognizing the degree to which they are breeding grounds for violence and staging areas for attacks on us and our allies. “Nation-building” should be embraced, not shunned, for it is in our interest to build solid states on the ruins of those that have collapsed. As in the 1950s, however, we must begin by dramatically increasing our military resources. We have known for many years that our standing armed forces were too small for the missions we expected them to perform. Such weakness helped drive and support the feckless foreign policy of the Clinton years, one of many factors contributing to the current crisis. As we now confront the reality of a prolonged effort to combat our enemies and to eliminate the violence and chaos that threatens us, we will also have to confront the reality of dramatically increased defense budgets. Estimates of the increases needed to merely offset current deficiencies have ranged from $50 to $100 billion annually. Now we will have to take $100 billion as a base figure and probably revise it upward. To fight a war against Afghanistan and possibly Iraq as well, while continuing to deter North Korea and China and maintaining a readiness to meet unforeseen challenges elsewhere, armed forces half again as large as they are now would still be too small. At the same time, calls for renewing the draft are premature and unwise. We learned during the Gulf War the value of a fully professional armed force. It was no accident that the first war in our history that did not begin with a defeat in battle was fought by the first all-professional force we ever used. If we desire to maintain casualty ratios similar to those we saw in 1991—and we should—it is essential to maintain the professional nature of the military. The current economic slowdown, combined with the enormous upsurge in patriotism following the attacks of September 11, should bring a sufficient number of new recruits into the armed forces, especially if proper incentives are offered. That is the mobilization program we should now pursue. Military change should occur at all levels. Conflict in Afghanistan will require extensive movement by helicopter, and that requirement will strain our present resources. We should immediately move to increase the helicopter lift available to the light army divisions. At the same time, we should procure many more Comanche scout-attack helicopters. The Comanche is the only such machine designed with the stealth technology needed to defeat the Stinger missiles and other shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles that the Afghan mujahedeen—as well as many other enemies of the United States—have. It is time for the army to transform its current structure, one suited to refighting Desert Storm or World War II, to something more flexible, agile, and amenable to rapid deployment. Proposals such as that offered by Colonel Douglas MacGregor in Breaking the Phalanx should be implemented at once. MacGregor offers an organizational plan for the army that would facilitate the rapid deployment and long-term sustainment of brigade-sized combined arms units. In addition, such a plan would make it easier for the army to operate in a collaborative environment. The army’s current structure of divisions and corps is outdated and cumbersome, and it must be revised. Even beyond that change, it is time to rethink the organization of our armed forces as a whole. The armed services should be reorganized to maximize our ability to integrate our air, land, sea, and space capabilities. We should also recognize that periods of conflict dramatically accelerate changes in military technology and the nature of war itself. Current military transformation programs, therefore, should be rethought from the ground up. Projected completion dates set around 2030 or later should be scrapped and earlier timelines developed. The nation will have to provide the necessary resources. Fortunately money spent on defense is productive, not harmful, for the economy. But the military expenditures of the 1950s and 1960s did more than merely spur the economy. They also led to fundamental technological breakthroughs ranging from the development of computers to the space program. It is time for another such push to develop the basic technologies needed to transform the military. All of these changes have parallels in America’s response to the Cold War. In the 1950s and 1960s not only did the United States greatly increase its peacetime defense budget, but we also revolutionized our armed forces. The concept of helicopter mobility was first developed during the early stages of the war in Vietnam, and the armed forces experimented with and adopted a number of dramatic changes in their organization and structure. Above all, the United States committed itself for the long haul to the support of its friends and the opposition of its enemies around the world. The wisdom or unwisdom of any given commitment can be debated, but there can be no dispute that the commitment as a whole was an essential element in the ultimate destruction of communism. We must go beyond the simple desire to “respond” and attack the particular individuals who were responsible for the events of September 11. The safety of the United States and its citizens requires that we answer with a dramatic change in our policies over the long term. That is the only way any good can come from the horrible loss we have suffered and the only way we can work to ensure the safety of our state and our children. Frederick W. Kagan is a military historian and the co-author of While America Sleeps.
