Loren Thompson's latest piece for Forbes entitled "Eight Ways In Which the Army is Strategically Unique" is a solid piece of advocacy from one of Washington's most skilled hands. I urge you to read it in full, as its even-handed tone and seemingly straightforward logic will seem unobjectionable to many. A closer reading however, raises some issues. I will start with his introductory paragraphs and then take each of the eight points of strategic uniqueness in turn.
At first blush, I don't think anyone would quibble with Thompson's statement that the Army is strategically unique, and to be fair, he does not state that the other services lack this quality. At the cost of $121B in FY15, the American public has a right to expect that its Army provides capabilities not duplicated elsewhere. His effort is aimed at bringing Army uniqueness into sharper relief--but his method of doing so demands that we dismiss virtually all other uses of military force that do not require large occupying forces as somehow unimportant.
Let's move onto his argument:
"Army efforts to articulate a compelling vision of its future are hampered by two obstacles. First, many politicians and policymakers don’t want to know the truth about what the future may hold for the joint force. Just as Washington avoids talking about the inevitability of nuclear deterrence one day failing, so it doesn’t want to discuss the possibility that tomorrow’s worst nightmares might find sanctuary in the back alleys of Cairo or Karachi — where we will have to go and root them out. Second, the Army has an inferiority complex about talking to policy elites hailing from Harvard, so it tries to dress up military imperatives in pretentious jargon that undercuts their urgency."
While there may be politicians and policymakers who "don't want to know the truth" about the future, I am unwilling to surrender to Thompson's view of it. The thought of THIS ARMY "root"ing out nightmares in teeming megacities like Cairo or Karachi strains credulity. Why would we do this? If we were going to do this, not only is the current Army insufficiently sized to do so, one twice its size would be hard pressed. As a force sizing contributor, I find this assertion without merit. As to the Army's "inferiority complex" about talking to Harvard foreign policy elites, I am not sure what Army he is talking about. Foreign policy elites have been lionizing Army leaders for nearly two decades now, with David Petraeus achieving Bilderberg invitation status and H.R. McMaster appearing in Time's 100 Most Influential People list.
"Thus the Army message is a bit muddled, and as a result it is taking disproportionate cuts in Washington’s budget wars just as it took disproportionate casualties in overseas contingencies."
I honor the Herculean effort of the U.S. Army in overseas contingencies, but I fail to see how the number of casualties suffered in the past is related to budget projections for the future. This is not strategy, this is emotion.
Now the Eight Ways:
1. The ability to seize and secure extensive areas for indefinite periods. Indeed, as long as those areas are on land. And as long as someone else gets the Army there. Unless those areas are in Canada or Mexico, the ability to dominate the seas and skies remains the table stakes for the Army to provide this, its most unique capability, and more importantly, to sustain it. It is utterly dependent on the Navy and the Air Force to perform this role. Doesn't make it unimportant or lacking in uniqueness, just makes it a dependency relationship. That said, there are whole swathes of military operations that do not in any way, shape or form require this ability. As long as we continue to value to capacity to invade and occupy large areas of land with hostile forces arrayed against us, this will continue to be a necessary capability of the U.S. Army and its primary strategic discriminator. The questions of whether to do so, why we should do so, and to what extent should the ability to do so crowd out other investments in the defense budget, remains relevant.
2. The ability to sustain the rest of the joint force through continuous ground presence. Again, as long as the objective of the joint force requires #1. And as long as #1 happens to involve land objectives, primarily. And as long as the Army is able to be SUSTAINED by the rest of the joint force.
3. The ability to conduct protracted counter-insurgency operations. No argument here; I think the Army has rightly increased its proficiency in this arena and it should do everything it can institutionally not to lose it. But there are relevant questions about the degree to which this capability should color force structure arguments, and whether the force necessary to do so (or #1, #2, and #4) needs to reside primarily in the Active Army.
4. The ability to root out adversaries entrenched in large urban centers. Returning to the nightmarish scenario posed in the introduction, Thompson raises the specter of street by street fighting in Karachi (Pakistan), a city of 13 million people. Thompson states: 'The Marine Corps acquitted itself well in the two battles of Fallujah, but that city’s population was barely 200,000 — a city like Karachi, with 13 million inhabitants, is simply beyond the capacity of any service other than the Army to occupy and control." Doing so in Karachi is beyond the Army's capability also, so the matter of scale applies equally. Were we to wish to engage in the combat Thompson describes, both the Army and the Marine Corps would need to be involved, in addition to the troops of many other nations or a dramatically increased size of both U.S. services. This is simply not a useful argument for sizing the Army--and certainly not the Active Duty Army.
5. The ability to train foreign security forces in all facets of land warfare. Another tautology. The Armed Service that we organize, train and equip to perform all facets of land warfare ought to be able to train others to do so. I understand that the purpose of Thompson's piece is to raise these discriminators, but it comes off sounding a lot like "hey, the Army is unique because it does the things we pay it to do".
6. The ability to support civil authorities in coping with disruptions. Indeed, another no argument point. In fact, it is an argument for placing more force structure in the Guard and less in the Active Duty Army.
7. The ability to limit escalation by providing proportional military options. From Fort Hood? From Fort Benning? Cherry-picking the Korea example works to Thompson's advantage here, but the worldwide appetite for provisioning U.S. troops on sovereign soil for decades at a time does not appear to be increasing. Additionally, all of the mobility questions apply equally here as they do in #1, #2 (and #3). This is the weakest of his points, and it is where the Army's contribution is least unique.
8. The ability to deter through forward presence that conveys resolve. Again, Thompson hand-waves at the appetite for other nations to take on the presence of U.S. Army forces. When a cooperative foreign government requests or accommodates our request to forward station landpower, Thompson is correct, significant resolve is shown. But these instances are the exception, not the rule, requiring a level of domestic political support here in the U.S. that the use of naval forces simply does not raise.
What is interesting to me is the degree to which Thompson's piece focuses attention on those things the Army does which are -- relatively speaking -- the easiest to expand and contract. #1-#4 are all a function primarily of how many people are in the Army and the National Guard. Although not exclusively, these are mainly the tasks of infantry and those in support of the infantry. Shaping the Army for its post-war downturn should not disproportionately retain those elements of the Army that are the easiest to reconstitute. Thompson seems to be saying that the cuts to the Army are unwise because we need a massive amount of people to do things that require a massive amount of people. There is no mention here of the capital intensive capabilities that the Army provides that are far more difficult to reconstitute and which would be far more useful in many of the scenarios currently dominating defense planning. By this I mean Air Defense Artillery and Aviation--both of which resemble Seapower and Air Power in the time and expense required to build up--as opposed to infantry which is relatively simpler to build over shorter periods of time.
Thompson's attempt to carve our strategic uniqueness for the Army strikes me as a method of arguing against budget cuts, and that is an honorable position. He has however, selected arguments which strike me as far less a case for the strategic uniqueness of the Army, and far more of an argument for the strategic uniqueness of the National Guard.
Bryan McGrath
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