If It's Not "War," It Sounds Like Checkers

In his book On War, General Carl von Clausewitz explains that war "is controlled by its political object," which "will set its course, prescribe the scale of means and effort which is required, and makes its influence felt throughout down to the smallest operational detail." Over the last two days, John Kerry has insisted that "President Obama is not asking America to go to war." He even goes so far as to suggest that he, General Dempsey and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel "know the difference between going to war and what President Obama is requesting now."

Over the last two days John Kerry has made a terrible case for war against Syria to Congress. While seeking action by Congress under the War Powers act, John Kerry has argued forcefully that all definitions of war by experts of warfare throughout history are wrong, and his definition is right. Ryan Evans at War on the Rocks captured the moment when Kerry jumped the shark.

Later, a frustrated Kerry revealed the real logic behind his position: public opinion. He noted that no Americans wanted to go to war with Syria and insisted the White House was of the same mind. “We don’t want to go to war in Syria either!” he exclaimed.  “It’s not what we’re here to ask. The President is not asking you to go to war…He’s simply saying we need to take an action that can degrade the capacity of a man who has been willing to kill his own people by breaking a nearly hundred year-old prohibition [against chemical weapons].”

Then, turning to Dempsey, Kerry asked, “General, do you want to speak to that?”

Dempsey responded, “No, not really, Secretary, thank you for offering.” Why? Because General Dempsey knew that was nonsense.

Words matter, and when they are not allowed to matter in policy, we are not being honest with ourselves. Over the last two days John Kerry described the political object with Syria as "to deter, disrupt, prevent, and degrade the potential for, future uses of chemical weapons or other weapons of mass destruction" by the Assad regime in Syria. The Obama administration has apparently convinced itself that a Desert Fox Part II action in Syria will produce the desired result, apparently ignoring that Desert Fox was in part what led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. I do not know any serious expert who believes the Obama administrations military approach to Syria will achieve a positive political object for the US.

The Obama administrations national security leadership, in Congressional testimony, is promoting a delusion regarding the act of war, and is incapable of admitting they are about to start a war. Most troubling, they are intentionally dismissing consequences and the gravity of such action under the assumption that military superiority translates to strategic success. The United States does not have a strategy that political leaders can articulate publicly on Syria, nor is the Obama administrations national security leadership publicly seeking meaningful military objectives of consequence to conditions in Syria. The United States does not have a coalition of support to provide legitimacy for military action, a coalition that protects the US from escalation or retaliation. John Kerry, in front of Congress, described those who believe it unwise for the US to inject our nation into another nations civil war uninvited, as armchair isolationists. No one knew for certain the intelligence cited by Colin Powell was wrong in 2003. Every human being educated on the definition of war knows John Kerry is wrong in 2013, and no one credible on the topic of war will ever be able to argue otherwise.

The arrogance of the Obama administration's national security team is a parade of red flags right through the halls of Congress. Secretary Kerry actually argues that if Assad is "arrogant" enough to defend himself that the US and our allies have ways to make him regret that decision, apparently without going to war. The arrogance of John Kerry implies the question to Congress, what could possibly go wrong? With no political policy or strategy that can be articulated publicly, no military objective of consequence, no coalition of consequence or authority, and by taking action that injects our nation into another nations civil war uninvited - my question is, how does this possibly end well?

The Obama administration is taking greater risk with Syria than their calculations suggest, and I truly believe the potential for a significant strategic defeat like nothing seen in at least a century is greater than the potential for success. The entire gambit by the Obama administration rests upon the starting assumption that Syria will do nothing and give the Obama administration exactly what they want. The other starting assumption is that Iran won't get involved or their involvement will be inconsequencial to our political objective. The problem with the first assumption is that John Kerry all but admitted in testimony over two days that while military strikes are not intended to achieve regime change, US policy is to build a working relationship over time with rebels for the intent of regime change. The problem with the second assumption is that Iran historically gets involved, and the chaos they created for Israel in 2006 and the chaos Iran created in Iraq and Afghanistan last decade was extremely effective in countering US political objectives. The starting assumption should be Assad will resist, because he should be well aware long term US policy is regime change, and that Iran will not only get involved but has a history of doing so successfully.


If the Obama administration takes authorization from Congress and moves directly towards military action against Syria, the lack of a coalition is a significant condition that increases the strategic risk to the United States. Iran and Syria will recognize that this may be the only opportunity they will ever have to take on the United States without a broader coalition of support, and as such see this as their best opportunity to strike. In stepping through Red Team's calculations, consider how exposed the US truly is.

1) The United States has no coalition, so a targeted, direct strike against the United States in "self defense" significantly limits the degree to which the international community will respond in support of the US. The UK vote highlights that politically, the rest of the world does not stand with a belligerent United States in a unilateral military action.

2) The United States is strategically and politically exposed and military forces throughout the region are spread thin. There are no troops in Iraq. Sequestration has significantly degraded the capacity of the US military across the entire Department of Defense towards fielding an effective reserve. Political cover by Russia and China will be available to Syria after the the US attacks.

3) Military objectives by Blue Team are not well defined, while military objectives by Red Team are well defined. All evidence suggests the leadership of the United States does not take seriously the threat of counterstrike. Russia has openly stated they will provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance to help Syria, and that presumably would also be for support of military action in counterstrike.

4) Successful counterstrike against the United States will be celebrated regionally, resulting in significant restrictions of movement within the region by US military forces and a collapse of US political credibility broadly. Local pressure can be exploited by red team on regional military installations to restrict movement of US assets in the region.

When I take the red team perspective of action unfolding in the Middle East, if I am Iran and Syria supported by Russia, my calculation is that I may never have a better opportunity to change the regional security conditions and balance of power in the Middle East than the opportunity being presented in this situation unfolding. By throwing every military asset possible in attack of the surface action group of 4 destroyers in the Mederterranian Sea, and throwing the entire armed forces of Iran against the Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group off the coast of Pakistan, the entire US policy for the Middle East would be dead in the water if Iran and Syrian attacks were to be successful. As red team, I would attack these targets specifically because they are sovereign US targets and don't inherently escalate tensions by giving any other nation a reason to join in.

Oh, you honestly believe - like John Kerry does - that the US would muster the military and muster allies around the world, and would start World War III in response to a tactical defeat at sea? Think again. The simple fact is the world would immediately stand in shock, and there is no evidence anywhere suggesting the Obama administration handles pressure well. The Middle East would explode in celebration of a public US tactical defeat, leaving the Nimitz Strike Group south of the Suez unable to cross north to help. Hu Jinping would shit a Great Wall when facing the possibility of a major war across the sea lines of communication throughout the Middle East, and would be with Russia in the UNSC within 24 hours shouting for a cease fire. Iran would immediately make clear that with the first sign of a US counterattack against Iran, Iran would unload their ballistic missiles into US bases across Afghanistan and potentially leverage other resources to broaden the conflict regionally.

Is Europe going to seriously come to the aid of a belligerent US who got smacked for attacking another nation without a coalition, any legitimate alliance, or a UNSC resolution? The NATO alliance clause doesn't protect the US under the scenario unfolding in Syria. Remember, gas prices across the world will triple - or more, in the first 24 hours on the threat of escalation, so the gravity of the situation will hit the wallet of an happy American population as well.  Where is the support for the US coming from? If you think the US has a reserve force ready to deploy in the US, you don't understand the impact of sequestration on the US military at all. It would take the US weeks, and in some cases months, to mobilize military forces in response to a major escalation. Does anyone honestly believe Asian nations are going to rise up and help the US after our military adventurism that went wrong? If the US Navy takes attrition across the Middle East and the Med, how does one think France - our only real coalition partner right now - will react? When bad ideas lead to things going badly, people don't take great risk in support of the foolish losers.

This isn't some impossible scenario, Syria does have the military capability to defeat 1 surface action group of 4 destroyers if committed to that tactical action, and Iran does have the capability to destroy a single Carrier Strike Group in a surprise attack less than 300 miles off the coast of Iran.

A successful counterstrike leaves the US with no one to turn to except Israel, whose assistance could send the entire region into chaos.

So if I am red team, if Obama goes from Congress directly to war, I attack. The Obama administration is playing a game of checkers, and it is impossible to suggest the absence of policy, strategy, objective, and coalition by the Obama administration is akin to a game of chess. If the enemy plays chess in response, we're screwed. At that point it would come down to US military forces winning tactical battles despite bad strategy to avoid humiliating strategic defeat, which honestly somewhat describes US policy for the last decade across the Middle East.

The Obama administration needs to go from Congress directly to the United Nations Security Council, and not directly to war. The Obama administration needs to build an international coalition to protect the United States from blowback, because without a coalition the US is strategically exposed giving a rare opportunity to Iran to take advantage of our isolation. With the worlds attention focused on Syria regarding chemical weapons, Syria is effectively deterred from using chemical weapons right now while the diplomatic process unfolds. The United States is effectively implementing the political object as laid out by John Kerry before Congress as long as the world's attention on Syria chemical weapons remains evident, so nothing is lost by the US committing to the long road of diplomacy as long as it is public and actively engaged.

Crowd-sourcing Future Fleet Designs

The Navy is rapidly headed for fiscal shoal waters where tough decisions will need to be made, with perhaps the design of tomorrow's fleet being the most important. The combination of unsustainable O&M expenditures and deployment tempo, a broken acquisition bureaucracy, indeterminate strategic futures, declining manning levels, and a ground swell of deferred maintenance creates an extremely complex environment in which to plan a future fleet. In an effort to expand the dialogue of this important issue beyond the inner circles of OPNAV, the Beltway Bandits, and think tanks, here's another experiment in crowd-sourcing. Below, American taxpayers, our international colleagues (including likely a few adversaries), and other random readers can have a chance to vote on some alternative U.S. Navy fleet compositions. Please choose one of the above options* and feel free to discuss your rationale in the comments below. I've purposely kept the options a bit vague and open for interpretation to promote discussion. Unfortunately, limitations in polling (and my tech skills) prohibit more than one vote, but feel free to log in and cast a second vote in this completely unscientific poll if you think there is some combination of the above that is preferred. As I've done in the past here, at a future date, I'll provide a summary of the best responses in the comments.

For full disclosure, my votes will be cast for smaller, more distributed and affordable ships, and a move towards more naval unmanned systems. But don't let that sway you... Spread the word here. Tweet

*Tech notes: If your browser is having trouble with the voting widget, hit the refresh button.  Hit the red x to close the little ad banner.

The opinions and views expressed in this post are those of the author alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense, the US Navy, or any other agency.

AirSea Battle As Operational Scapegoat

The AirSea Battle (ASB) discourse is looking an awful lot like the counterinsurgency (COIN) debate was circa 2009. Is AirSea Battle a strategy? An operational concept? Is it an operational concept passing for a strategy? Does anyone really know or agree on what AirSeaBattle is? Of course there's also a few questions that have fairly little in common with COIN. Given China's contribution to anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities some question whether or not ASB is really about all about Beijing. There have been a few sound criticisms and many, many spurious criticisms of ASB. Few take on the central issue: ASB is purely a operational concept--or at at the very least an umbrella concept for a host of tactical efforts to synchronize air and naval operational and technical integration. So why is it being blamed for problems of strategy?

USN Captain Philip Dupree and USAF COL Jordan Thomas, the two service leads in the AirSea Battle office, wrote a sensible op-ed in Armed Forces Journal in an effort to clear the air about ASB. The piece argues that ASB is tied to a quest for a "pre-integrated" joint force whose closeness would facilitate greater rapport and capability-building. We get a clearer picture about the concept when they describe what a world without ASB would look like:

In such a future, attempts to use the familiar expeditionary model of massing combat power — the so-called “iron mountain” — at a handful of main operating bases to conduct extensive mission rehearsal and subsequently seize the initiative at a time and place of the Joint Force commander’s choosing, may not be feasible. Advanced adversaries could deny secure U.S. land basing at very long ranges, preventing air and naval forces from gaining local air superiority. Sea basing could also be challenged and attempts at ad hoc integration may be insufficient. Enemy capabilities could prevent surface action groups from operating at effective ranges and sea control may therefore be untenable. Space and cyberspace access would not be assured, and global communications and the exchange of information could be held hostage by any motivated aggressor. 

Sure, ASB may be about China in many ways but this paragraph demonstrates that the office has focused more on the capability in question. ASB could also be about Iran in the Persian Gulf and a host of other future scenarios in a world in which the barriers to operating a reconnaissance-strike complex seem to be rapidly falling. Good strategy is impossible without viable tactics, and ASB is simply a means of ensuring that a future strategist has tactical and operational options. The joint expeditionary model in all its facets--air, naval, ground, and the cyber elements that join all of the other domains together--is threatened. And ASB helps obviate that facet of the problem. So what's the beef, beyond the clumsy way it has been explained?

ASB is being criticized mostly because of what it supposedly implies about US strategy in the Pacific. But ASB has as little to do with the fundamental tenants of that strategy. Nor is it clear that it is entirely about the Pacific. Context would ultimately dictate the shape of a US-China confrontation, and ASB would be only one part of a larger military effort. Of course, it is not entirely free from a geopolitical context. The linked article discusses the idea of a global commons, something that may not exist in the way the authors imagine it. But the commons is not necessarily essential to the shape and form of ASB. The doctrine is about a specific set of weapons that can threaten American response to regional actors.

The problem--and this has little to do with the Pentagon and everything to do with American strategy as a whole--is the way that the doctrine is becoming seen as a stand-in for specific American policies and strategies in the Pacific and elsewhere. Such confusion is understandable. First, prior doctrines were based within specific scenarios and strategies. Second, the military's effort to prepare for crisis situations has outpaced domestic politics.  AirLand Battle (ALB), ASB's namesake, was couched within a specific threat scenario Americans had accepted for generations: Europe must be defended from the Soviet hordes. Every instrument of American national power--from official diplomacy and public diplomacy efforts to conventional and nuclear forces--had to hold the line in Europe.

ALB, though part of the Army's post-Vietnam internal shift, originated because prior operational concepts for accomplishing a set mission were judged invalid. There is nothing close to the level of consensus that existed over the need to hold the line in Europe when it comes to US policy in Asia or the Persian Gulf today. Is China an enemy, an competitor, or a state that can be cooperated with?  There is arguably a significant debate among the American foreign policy and national security community surrounding this question and as Robert Kelly has blogged Southeast Asia is also nearly invisible in US domestic politics. Our threat perception of Iran is far more clear, but this has not necessarily translated into a more long-term vision of what we will do beyond the immediate task of preventing them from acquiring nuclear weapons. Furthermore, if US strategy in those regions is also in flux, the states that will inevitably lie in the path of warfare also get a vote too.

As two analysts recently wrote about operational concepts, the military is really not in control of the most important strategic aspects of how ASB would be employed in a given theater scenario:

When you only control 25% of the mechanisms of national strategy, and that strategy itself is subject to rapid and radical change, this leads the military to develop operational concepts that must cover every conceivable enemy, in every conceivable circumstance, in any terrain or theater.

Let's take a look at a recent case study. As Sean Lawson argues, network-centric warfare was originally a fairly benign idea: who could argue with the proposition that military forces could take advantage of new technology and organizational concepts to network themselves better? NWC also fit well within the geopolitical context of the 1990s, dominated by what seemed to be endemic global uncertainty and confusion over the American military's role. NWC applied to both peace and war, increased American capabilities for regional intervention in brushfire wars, and telegraphed superior synchronization and offensive capabilities to potential adversaries. As befitting its naval origins, NWC built on a tradition of Cold War use of naval forces for crisis stability and federated command and control. Of course, as we now know, NWC also merged with an expansive theory of geopolitics after the September 11 attacks that stressed global intervention across the spectrum of war and peace. It seems that we've shed NWC 2.0's geopolitical ambitions and returned to its operational core. Or not. The point is that NWC, as an operational concept, had very little intrinsic flaws. Most mid-2000s critiques dealt with the way it had been applied as a driver of a geopolitical doctrine--a very different animal.

The military has been left holding the bag because of political uncertainty, a relationship that has been a constant since 1991. Doctrines like ASB and NWC are attempts to merely enable what seems to be the political consensus of the moment. If those politics shift, the doctrine does too. The most likely near-term use of ASB, in fact, will probably be in the Middle East if prevailing trends in the military balance continue.  It would be simply another addition to a long trend of "big war" capabilities migrating to middle-range and small wars. ASB is an operational chameleon, in short, because it must be.

Roles and Missions Press Conference

The purpose of the press conference on Wednesday by Defense Secretary Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was to discuss the Roles and Missions debate the President called for earlier this year. The following is from the transcript of the press conference.

SEC. GATES: Good afternoon.

On April 13th, President Obama announced his framework for tackling our nation's considerable long-term fiscal challenges. As part of that deficit reduction effort, he set a goal of holding the growth in base national security spending below inflation for the next 12 years, which would save about $400 billion, the preponderance of which would come from the Department of Defense. The president also made clear that before making any specific budget decisions, we must first conduct a fundamental review of America's military missions, capabilities and security role around the world.

Today I'm announcing the framework for the comprehensive review that the Department of Defense is launching to inform future decisions about spending on national security.

First, some context. For more than two years, the leadership of this department has been working on reforming the way the Pentagon does business to respond to the difficult fiscal situation facing the nation and to ensure that our military has the capabilities needed to protect our interests in a dangerous and unstable world. This effort began two years ago with an overhaul of the department's approach to military acquisition, curtailing or canceling about 20 troubled weapons programs. It continued last year with a department-wide campaign to generate savings from excessive overhead that was reallocated to the services for reinvestment -- new expenses as well as deficit reduction. The overarching goal of these efforts was to carve out enough budget space to preserve and enhance key military capabilities in the face of declining rates of budget growth.

The new comprehensive review will ensure that future spending decisions are focused on strategy and risks, and are not simply a math and accounting exercise. The overarching goal will be to preserve a U.S. military capable of meeting crucial national security priorities even if fiscal pressure requires reductions in the force's size. In my view, we must reject the traditional approach of applying across-the-board cuts, the simplest and most politically expedient approach both inside this building and outside of it. That kind of an approach preserves overhead and maintains force structure on paper. It results in a hollowing-out of the force from a lack of proper training, maintenance and equipment. We've been there before, in the 1970s and in the 1990s.

This review will be guided by the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy, the National Military Strategy, the Chairman's Risk Assessment, and the Quadrennial Defense Review [QDR] to ensure appropriate focus on strategic policy choices first and corresponding changes in the DoD budget second.

The QDR provides today's basis for sizing the force, focusing its missions and shaping its capabilities. But there is not a strong analytical link between the QDR and the present makeup of our forces. This review will establish that linkage, so that we can see the impact of changing QDR strategy on force structure, missions and capabilities. And only once competing strategy options are identified should the review begin to consider fiscal implications and options.

To do this, the review should develop specific program options that can be categorized in four bins.

The first bin is additional efficiencies, continuing the efforts we launched last year. These changes would reduce DoD costs with minimal impact on military capability. We must be even more aggressive in curtailing bureaucratic excess and overhead before considering fundamental changes in national strategy or force capabilities.

And while I believe the department can identify additional significant efficiencies, they will not result in sufficient savings to meet the president's direction. Therefore, a second bin will involve a serious examination of established policies, programs, processes and mandates that drive the dramatic increase in defense operating costs, to include the way we deliver health care, compensate military personnel, provide retirement benefits, sustain our infrastructure and acquire goods and services.

The third bin will contain options to reduce or eliminate marginal missions and marginal capabilities, specialized and costly programs that are useful in only a limited range of circumstances or contingencies. They represent missions that the department carries out today that, while of value, are not central to our core mission or are of lower priority.

The final bin and the hardest category strategically -- and I would say also intellectually -- will be specific alternative modifications to the QDR strategy that translate into options for reductions in force structure or capability needed to execute the strategy. This latter bin will be informed by all the other activities in this framework.

In the end, this process must be about identifying options for the President and the Congress, where the nation is willing to accept risk in exchange for reduced investment in the Department of Defense. The defense comprehensive review will be jointly led by the director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, the under secretary of defense for Policy and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

As I have written several times, I believe it is very important for the Department of Defense to hold a legitimate debate and address the budget challenges with a strategic approach rather than a math exercise. I applaud the Secretary and the Chairman for leading this process and starting it on the right note. The DoD media? Not so much. These were the only two questions in the press conference that actually discussed this issue, as everyone else was focused on Pakistan.

Q: Let me ask about the budget rollout that just -- you announced here. Can you give the public a sense of what one or two missions will definitely be reviewed? You know, COIN [counterinsurgency], NEO [noncombatant evacuation operations] operations -- what will be reviewed? Can you give one or two examples, and the resource implications to some of these missions?

SEC. GATES: Well, let me give you an example of the -- of the hardest bin, the third bin, in terms of the strategic alternatives. We have had the -- it has been our strategy for many years now to be able to fight two regional -- two major regional conflicts simultaneously. If you were to tell yourself the likelihood of having two such fights simultaneously is low and you could therefore plan to fight sequentially, that would have huge implications in terms of the size of force that you need to maintain. But the other side of that is the risk involved if you're wrong. And the other guys always have a vote. So that's the kind of strategy and risk that we want to surface for the president and for the Congress.

You know, I mean, what I am really working against here is what we did in the '70s and in the '90s, which was these across-the-board cuts that hollowed out the force. We have got to avoid that, no matter what happens in this process. But the consequence of avoiding that is everybody -- from the services to the chairman to the secretary of this department -- making tough decisions, and then the president and the Congress making tough decisions, because they have to accept responsibility for risk.

And I want to force that kind of a discussion. If we're going to cut the military, if we're going to reduce the resources and the size of the U.S. military, people need to make conscious choices about what the implications of that are for the security of the country as well as for the operations that we have around the world.

And I just -- that's why I want this review in place, to provide the substance for making those kinds of conscientious decisions where the political leadership of the country, in essence, says: We are prepared to accept this risk in return for reduced investment in defense.

Q: One of the big programs is the F-35. It overlays many of these scenarios, many of the rules and missions of the military. To what extent will this large -- the Pentagon's largest program and its 2,400 airplanes and about $11 billion a year investment over the next decade -- to what extent will that -- will that quantity be reviewed to see whether the program should be scaled back accordingly?

SEC. GATES: Well, first of all, the country needs the F-35. We need a fifth-generation fighter and -- in addition to the F-22. And so we must have that. Obviously, if you're going to change strategies or missions, that has implications for the amount of equipment that you buy. And I would expect that to apply across the board, not just to the F-35.

But everything in terms of looking at these strategic equations, if you will, has to do with the amount of capability that you buy or that you invest in. But I would just make the point -- and here's where this -- where the rubber meets the road on this -- we must buy a new tanker. We must buy a fifth-generation fighter. We must replace the ballistic missile submarines toward the end of this decade. There are -- there are a number of things -- the Army must reset after Afghanistan, and Marine Corps as well, just -- but to a lesser extent.

So the point is, there are some significant new investments that must be made. So how do you pay for that in the context that we're talking about? Those are the kinds of hard choices that I want to surface and have people address, and I -- because, frankly, as I said in my opening statement, both within this building and outside it the easiest thing is to say cut defense by X percent. And I think that would be the most dangerous approach of all.

Q: What does the $400 billion represent --

SEC. GATES: That’s enough (inaudible). (Cross talk and laughter.)

Everything else asked by the media was related to Osama bin Laden or Pakistan. The media is mostly incapable of covering a strategic debate inside the Pentagon (with a few exceptions), so it is very difficult to expect even the DoD press corps to take this process seriously.

It will be interesting if anyone inside the DoD actually takes this process seriously, particularly as Secretary Gates steps down in just over a month. I do not have much faith.

Muddling

I'll have more thoughts on the subject later in the week, especially in response to Galrahn's "Obama Doctrine" posts, but for today I've written my WPR column on grand strategy and "muddling through."

None of this is to suggest that we should avoid grand strategic thinking. Such thought helps clarify the values upon which we construct our interests and, consequently, how we go about securing those interests. However, grand strategy offers neither a template nor a roadmap for dealing with particular foreign policy events. Rather, it highlights certain values and gives some indication of how those values relate to one another. As such, a grand strategy gives guidance to policymakers in specific crises without dictating a particular response. Instead of thinking of the "Obama doctrine," whatever that might be, as dictating that we should pursue certain policies, we should think of it as creating a framework for weighing the available options. Every individual application of a doctrine will inevitably involve the messy compromises that constitute muddling through. That's why becoming adept at muddling is every bit as important as creating a coherent grand strategy.

Strategy and Airpower

Reading and listening to political scientists discuss policy for Libya, I was sure I had been exposed to everything stupid that could be stated in a strategic context regarding airpower.

I was wrong.

It turns out the fantasy land filled with political science majors touting decisive airpower tactics like No-Fly Zones in foreign civil wars is potentially more coherent than what is being printed these days in Air and Space Journal, Air University Press.

Strategy and Airpower (PDF)
Col John A. Warden III, USAF, Retired
Air University's Air and Space Power Journal
Spring 2011
Vol XXV, No. 1

Selected Excerpts:

"Airpower enables us to think about conflict from a future-back, end-game-first perspective as opposed to one based on the battle obsession of Clausewitz and his followers. It also opens another very exciting possibility: conflict with little or no unplanned destruction or shedding of blood."

"So here is a proposition: let us resolve to expunge the words fighting, battle, shape the battlefield, battlespace, and the war fighter from our vocabulary, to relegate the "means" of war to the last thing we think about, and to elevate the "end" to the pedestal of our consideration. In other words, let's bury thousands of years of bloody battle stories, as heroic as they were, and start looking at war-and eventually airpower-from its end point, which by definition means from a strategic perspective."

"Movement from the parallel domain to the serial domain causes the probability of success to begin to fall dramatically. Taking a very long time decreases the chances considerably. It isn't impossible to win a long war, but the odds are very low-and this applies to both sides, despite significant differences in their centers of gravity. Since good strategy depends heavily on understanding probabilities, deliberately embarking on a low-probability, long serial war does not make much sense."

"Very simply, whether in war or business, our normal approach to the time element is exactly backward: we ask ourselves how long something will take rather than decide how long it should take in order to create parallel effects and succeed at an acceptable cost."

"We should take a page from business, which long ago learned that selling a product had to involve much more than touting its technical goodness. Products sell because customers see them as filling a real need in their lives; airpower advocates have not done well in this regard. If airpower is something different, we must highlight its differences and show convincingly that it fills a vital need."

"Airpower exponents not only need to connect airpower directly to strategy and market their product well, but also need to start believing in it. Those who begin a discussion by noting that airpower "can't do everything" do themselves and their listeners a real disservice."

"Of course, espousing the unlimited concept of airpower exposes the advocate to charges of airpower zealotry, a lack of "jointness," or some other nasty label. But we need to become confident enough to shrug off these labels."

Everything I want to say about this article is negative, so I'll let readers lead the analysis here.

But I will make a side observation, particularly in light of that last paragraph which has been thrown at me lately in another discussion regarding the advocacy of seapower...

With professional articles like this, the United States Air Force continues to project themselves as unlearned Borg drones carpet bombing legitimate strategic thought with absurdity in the name of self relevance. Air Defense Press is struggling for legitimacy primarily because they have sacrificed everything to the alter of airpower advocacy.

Don't laugh Navy thinker, because if the Navy leadership ignores the Board of Directors at the US Naval Institute, this type of self-service incoherent bullshit sold to the alter of cash cow interests is exactly what people following USNI closely legitimately believe will begin happening to Proceedings starting this year. If you doubt what I am saying, you had better do your own research into the subject - indeed I encourage it.

The Navy cannot under any condition allow their strategic thought institutions, both inside and outside the Navy, become focused content shops shaping the message towards a specific point of view. To understand why, simply look at the Air Force.

The Calm Before the Storm

I was thinking of this quote from Tom Rick's book The Gamble today.

“But Fallon prided himself on being a strategic thinker, a sense he may have developed because there was little competition in that arena in the Navy, which in recent years has tended to be weak, intellectually, aside from its elite counter-terror force in Special Operations, which is practically a separate service. It is difficult, for example, to think of a senior Navy officer who has played a prominent role in shaping American strategy since 9/11, or of an active-duty Navy officer who has written a book or essay as influential as those produced by the Army’s Col. H.R. McMaster, Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, and Lt. Col. John Nagl.”

It's a good thing he didn't use General Petraeus as an example, because when I read the last paragraph on the last page of this article discussing Bob Woodward's upcoming book, I was stunned.

Woodward quotes Petraeus as saying, "You have to recognize also that I don't think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. It's a little bit like Iraq, actually. . . . Yes, there has been enormous progress in Iraq. But there are still horrific attacks in Iraq, and you have to stay vigilant. You have to stay after it. This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids' lives."

My youngest daughter is 5. Assuming she lives to be at least 65, under the Petraeus strategy for Afghanistan the United States would have over 100,000 troops fighting a land war in Asia until at least 2075.

As this already does represent the prevailing strategic thinking in the Army - which is why the media is printing articles on how General Petraeus is buying more time for troops on the ground in Afghanistan. Nothing personal Mr. Ricks, but I'll take the strategic thinking coming from the Navy over the Army 10 times out of 10 when this is the prevailing strategic wisdom of the Army.

I don't know about you, but based on what I have read of Bob Woodward's book - it may end up being the first book I buy just to have a copy of the appendix. Robert Haddick at the Small Wars Journal explains:

Based only on this morning’s accounts from the Washington Post and New York Times, Obama’s Wars’ greatest victim will not be a few bickering staffers but rather President Obama himself. According to Woodward and the newspaper accounts of his book, it was Obama who dictated the detailed specifications of America’s military strategy in Afghanistan. These specifications arrived in the form of a six-page single-spaced "terms sheet," seemingtly drawn up to resemble a legal contract between Obama and his generals. But Obama’s "terms sheet" is apparently a stew of bureaucratic and political compromises among interest groups, not a coherent strategy. Having personally written it, Obama will not be able to blame its inevitable failure on misguided staffers.

This six-page single-spaced "terms sheet" is supposedly listed as an appendix in Bob Woodward's book. I have no idea what it says, but based on the reporting I'm thinking it will not reflect well on the Commander and Chief.

Observing a Blind Spot

Welcome to the new century, same as the old century...

Russian navy aircraft made a series of Cold War-style close passes over the frigate Taylor last weekend after its visit to the northern port city of Murmansk, according to a report Thursday, in a chain of incidents discussed in person by the top U.S. and Russian uniformed naval officers this week at the Pentagon.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead was already set to meet his Russian counterpart, Adm. Vladimir Vysotskiy, as part of an official visit by Russian defense officials, so the two used the chance Wednesday to also talk about Taylor’s encounters, Roughead’s spokesman confirmed.

“They did have a productive, private conversation at their level and CNO was satisfied,” Cmdr. Charlie Brown told Navy Times.

According to an online report by CBS News, a “Russian maritime patrol aircraft” — likely a Tupolev Tu-95 Bear — made two low passes over the Taylor “with its bomb bay doors open,” in a fly-by similar to what once were regular encounters between U.S. and Russian crews in the Cold War. The next day, “a Russian warship appeared on the horizon” and launched a helicopter that circled Taylor “at close range.”

Well, the good news is our guided missile frigates are heavily armed to protect themselves from any attack by an old Tu-95...

Hmm.

Well, at least the Littoral Combat Ship that replaces the old frigate will be able to address this problem by outrunning the threat...

Hmm.

Well, we'll just outsource this problem to the 1000 Ship Navy...

Hmm.

Seriously, don't worry about it, military power on US Navy ships under 9000 tons is overrated in the 21st century, and Bear's buzzing US Navy ships is so last century...

Dan Goure's Singing My Tune.....

Dr. Dan Goure of the Lexington Institute has posted a concise criticism of our inability or unwillingness to make strategic choices.  A sample follows:

"In the past, when U.S. leaders refused to make choices they allowed the military to shrink symmetrically, by cutting every program or service a little. That approach is self-defeating. It makes no sense to keep a so-called full spectrum military but continually reduce it in size. That approach leads to a force that is incapable of meeting any threat."

While Dr. Goure and I may not agree on what approach we SHOULD take, our criticisms of the current paradigm are consistent.  Keep heading in the direction we're heading, and we'll do the things we do now, only less well, less often and in fewer places.



Bryan McGrath