THE ARMED FORCES WE DESERVE

During the Cold War, America’s defense policy was relatively clear. The magnitude of Soviet power and the ubiquitous Communist threat provided reasons to remain committed globally and to expend resources on defense. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, security experts have been scanning the horizon for threats to replace the “evil empire” as the basis for our policy. But there are no such threats, and if we act wisely, there need be none soon. Wisdom, unfortunately, is in short supply.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, a succession of studies undertaken by Congress and by the Pentagon, from the Base Force Review of 1991 up through the National Defense Panel report of 1997, has failed to establish a wise framework for defense policy. Some of these reports, including the Base Force Review and the Bottom-Up Review, posit threats that are not ultimately credible; as a basis for policy, these studies are merely ineffective. But the others — reports like that of the National Defense Panel — which speak of the present relatively peaceful state of the world as a “strategic pause,” are dangerous. They may well lure us down the path of irresponsibility. The truth is that a threat-based calculus of our defense needs simply is outmoded. We must look beyond the Cold War paradigm or put our future security at risk.

Yet the proper remedy is not far to seek. Alfred Thayer Mahan spelled it out a century ago in relation to seapower; today, as Lt. Col. David T. Fautua argues in a dissertation forthcoming from the University of North Carolina, Mahan’s insight should be applied to all the services: A nation’s armed forces exist to defend its interests, and those forces must be configured to that end. The military must be prepared to defend the nation’s interests in times of peace as well as war; by supporting diplomacy as well as, when diplomacy fails, responding to threats. It may be that no military threats to the United States are discernible today, but America’s interests have not faded, and it is the imperative of promoting and protecting those interests that should dictate our military requirements.

In this national-security model, the nation’s interests cannot be defined narrowly or even as confidently as some would suggest. America has certain clear short-term interests, and other clear long-term interests. Beyond those, however, still other, unpredictable interests will take shape. Interests arise from the need for access to vital resources, from international treaty commitments, from commitments of friendship to states with similar political systems and worldviews, from humanitarian desires not to permit horrors to continue unimpeded, and even from the public statements of our leaders, who may pin America’s prestige willy-nilly to some event in a far-off land. It is impossible to know what all our interests will be even five years into the future, just as it is impossible to know exactly what threats will develop.

In three regions — Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia — we have vital national interests, both general and specific, that are well established, rooted in history and in economic relationships. As a general matter, we must at all times maintain the security and stability of each of these regions, both internally and with regard to the rest of the world. Failure to do so in Europe, for example, would lead to the rearmament of Germany, which would be inherently destabilizing. However peaceable its intentions, a rearmed Germany would be by far the most powerful state in Europe and would be perceived as posing a threat to its neighbors. At a minimum, Germany’s rearmament would lead to a general rearmament on the continent; the worst case has been seen already twice this century.

In Asia, similarly, stability and security allow Japan to continue effectively disarmed. Should stability falter and Japan’s security be threatened, that state, too, would rearm. Again, we need not attribute any expansionist motives to the Japanese. We need only note that Japanese rearmament would threaten the security of states throughout the region, which in turn would almost certainly rearm. Arms races do not lead automatically to wars, but they do inevitably increase tensions. In addition, an arms race in Europe or the Far East would present the United States with an awful dilemma: Either we, too, would rearm simply to keep pace, or we would abandon our influence in those regions. That alternative will never be acceptable. From an economic standpoint, at least for the foreseeable future, the collapse or closure to us of East Asia or Europe would be calamitous. Nor could we afford to view with equanimity the possibility that a single state or coalition might harness the greater part of the economic and military potential of either region. Such a state or coalition might well be on the way to becoming a global competitor, a development that we should seek assiduously to prevent.

The situation in the Middle East is more complicated. Although the stakes are lower (even a regional hegemon could not compete with us as a peer), the threats are greater and more exigent. Discussions of the recent crisis in Iraq missed a basic point: The problem is not just Saddam Hussein or his weapons of mass destruction. Even more basic is the fact that an Iraq free of sanctions is so much more powerful than any of its neighbors to the west as to constitute a permanent threat to regional stability. This situation was held in check first by the Cold War, then by sanctions in the years following the Gulf War. When the sanctions are gone, only American power will stand between Iraq and regional hegemony. The point is not to focus on the threat that Iraq poses now, but to attend to our vital interest in keeping Iraq or any other state (such as Iran) from establishing hegemony.

Our vital interest in keeping these three regions stable and secure is clear. Failure would have repercussions around the world, which would reach our shores. The list of our interests does not end here, however. America must also maintain peace and stability in Central and, to a lesser extent, South America, and cannot ignore unrest in North Africa or South Asia because of those regions’ links with the Middle East.

It is worth noting that threats to stability are already present in all of these regions. Continued instability in Afghanistan, for example, threatens the region because of the ways in which ethnicity, religion, and geography conflict with the existing borders. Mexico may have overcome its most ominous difficulties, and Nicaragua appears to be more stable than it was, but lulls between periods of upheaval are common in Latin America. In the Middle East and much of North Africa, too, the current quiescence may or may not continue. Nor have the strains associated with economic and political development been eliminated in these regions or in sub-Saharan Africa or South America. Causes of tension and conflict will continue.

But what, many ask, is America’s interest in any of these troubles? Surely we have no vital interest in seeing to it that the states of Africa coexist peacefully, they say, or in interfering in disputes within the Muslim world. Some even question our need or our right to interfere in the affairs of Europe, the Middle East, and the Pacific Rim. The answer is that, in addition to whatever particular interests may crop up, we also have certain general, long-term interests that we evade only at great cost.

In the first place, America has an interest in a peaceful world where disputes are solved by diplomacy and compromise rather than by war. Such an orderly world will not exist unless we make it and maintain it, for it is not the normal order of things. If we withdraw from our commitment to maintain the peace, power vacuums will be created across the globe. Then not merely will aspiring regional hegemons seize the opportunity to expand, but — what is more likely and more dangerous — instabilities within key countries in regions we have abandoned will threaten or tempt their neighbors. If we are not present to contain the instabilities that arise, others will take our place — and their notions of containment are unlikely to match our notions of a peaceful world.

In the second place, there are powerful groups of people in the world who hate us, hate our social order, hate the way our values have spread throughout the world, frequently to the detriment of their own, and hate our economic predominance, however discreetly we assert it. As societies modernize, large groups of people are dispossessed; their old careers, ways of life, and values vanish. As the preeminent world power, the United States will probably continue to bear the brunt of the anger of such people. Even though we hate no one and aspire to no domination, we will continue to have determined enemies.

In the third place, we must remember that no other state’s interests will ever fully coincide with our own. Even our staunchest allies diverge from us on important issues. Friendship and powerful common interests may have held us together, but this need not always be so, particularly if we stop pursuing our common interests. As long as we work in conjunction with major regional powers to maintain stability in their region, they are likely to remain our allies. But if we were to abandon, say, Europe or, worse still, East Asia, to its own devices, how long could we count on German or Japanese friendship? Even if those countries hewed to the political and diplomatic course they have followed for fifty years — which is by no means guaranteed — we could, by failing to assist them in securing their own interests, cause them to reflect upon the many ways in which their interests clash with ours. We might end up, through inaction, turning current friends into the very regional hegemons we seek to discourage.

This interests-based approach to national security has important implications for defense. Most basic is an intellectual reorientation: We must stop focusing on threats and start thinking in terms of the missions we may be called on to perform in order to secure our interests. Forward basing in Europe and East Asia, for instance, is less a prerequisite for meeting threats in those regions than it is a critical symbol of our commitment to take upon ourselves the maintenance of their security and stability. The force requirement in the Middle East, on the other hand, is not merely what is necessary to deter Saddam from invading his neighbors, but what is necessary to remove Saddam from power and replace him with a more stable regime, since that mission may well become central to securing our interests in the region.

Above all, since we must maintain stability in the regions vital to us, it is essential that our forces be well adapted to that purpose. Today, this is not the case. Consider, for example, the problem of rapid deployment. It has long been axiomatic that America must possess the ability to project decisive force anywhere in the world at short notice, and this requirement is now more pivotal than ever. Yet some obvious organizational and logistical features of our armed forces systematically impede rapid deployment.

Thus, in the Army, the basic organizational unit for supplies and support services is the division (about 20,000 men), while the basic unit for training is the brigade (about 5,000 men). Brigades are often deployed pursuant to the small-scale missions that are common now, but they lack their own supply system, and their departure disrupts the supply of the division they leave behind. A sensible remedy for this has been proposed: In Breaking the Phalanx, Col. Douglas MacGregor urges abolishing the division and making a brigade-sized “group” the basic unit for both training and deployment. But apparently no one is listening. Similarly, the development of a lightweight, fuel-efficient tank made of state-of-the-art high-strength materials would enormously facilitate the deployment of armored forces and therefore deserves priority. But the advanced-technology enthusiasts, for all their talk of a “revolution in military affairs,” are so caught up in their vision of Information Age war, as they say it will be waged in 2020, that they completely overlook this immediate need.

The prophets of this revolution are unrealistic on several counts. They make a beguiling case that technology will usher in an era in which war is cheap, painless, and always won by the United States. The key challenge, as they see it, is to fund the technologies of the future; meanwhile, the present “strategic pause” between major struggles means that force structure can be safely cut. In fact, of course, there is no such thing as a strategic pause, any more than there is painless war. Our interests are never in abeyance. Nor can the weapons of 2020 be built now and grafted onto a 19th-century force structure. Even the most forward-looking change must be evolutionary, as new technologies, force structures, fighting techniques, and doctrines are continually adapted to serve the nation’s actual needs.

To revamp our armed forces as required to defend our interests will cost a lot more than we are planning to pay, and no one knows how much. But we can afford it. Between 1970 and 1995, the United States spent an average of 5.5 percent of its gross domestic product on defense. At the end of that period, we were in the midst of one of the biggest economic booms in history — so defense spending did not break us. Yet today we are told that spending 3 percent of GDP on defense will hurt the economy, unbalance the budget, and starve vital programs. This claim is buttressed by the assertion that our responsibilities are lighter than they were during the Cold War.

The reality is that, far from being a “peaceful interlude,” the present is a time of fateful choices for national-security policy. We must decide whether to rebuild our armed forces and assertively shape the international environment — or watch our weakness encourage the international situation to slip out of our control. If we undertake the technological innovations already needed, without being mesmerized by a potential revolution still ahead; if we adopt a force structure that allows us to defend our national interests now, and maintain the will to defend them, then the future will suit us. We can avert the rise of peer competitors, instability, and war in regions vital to us — on condition that we wake up to the gravity of the decisions we are making now.

Frederick W. Kagan is assistant professor of military history at the United States Military Academy at West Point. The views in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Military Academy, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense.