The Obama administration may have missed a critical opportunity to deter further aggression by Russia and the Islamic State with its decision not to use land forces to counter the threats, the Army’s top training and doctrinal general said Thursday.
Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster is known for his frank assessments of conflict. While he tread carefully to not advocate for a specific policy on Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, he was blunt about the impact he believes land forces would have had on the current outcome.
“The only way to deal with [aggressors such as Russia and the Islamic State] is through forward deterrence, and I think forward deterrence involves land forces,” McMaster told reporters at a breakfast in Washington on Thursday. “It is very difficult to achieve political outcomes from a standoff range,” McMaster said.
As the deputy commanding general, futures, of the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, McMaster is responsible for shaping the Army to face future wars.
But the future he said the Army should shape for — brigade-sized deployments with integrated air and precision strike support — splits with the administration’s current view of drones, limited airstrikes and the limited use of special forces.
In McMaster’s view, future U.S. conflicts will look a lot like the current campaigns by the Islamic State and Russia — subversive, violent political campaigns that mask both motive and aggressive land grabs. Without the mass of U.S. troops to maintain a presence and an advantage, it will be difficult for the U.S. to achieve its counter-insurgency goals, he said.
Russia used “unconventional forces under the cover of conventional forces to seize limited objectives quickly. … I think you can make the argument for forward deployed forces at the frontier to ratchet the costs up of that initial action. I think land forces have an incredibly important role in that.”
