From Secretary Panetta in Turkey:
We're still a country that faces a number of threats. We've still got a war in -- in Afghanistan. And having just come from there, you know, recognizing that our troops are still out there, you know, facing an enemy, getting killed by IEDs, we're in a war. And we'll be fighting -- you know, the likelihood is we'll be fighting for -- for another year or more.
Secondly, we still are confronting terrorism. Even though we, you know, gotten rid of bin Laden, we've gotten rid of the key leadership there, the fact is al-Qaeda still represents a threat. They're a threat in Yemen. They're a threat in Somalia. They're a threat in Mali, in North Africa. And our commitment is, we are going to go after them so that they have no place to hide.
We still have the problem of North Korea and the unpredictability of North Korea. We just saw that happen this last week, when they launched another missile, in violation of all international requirements and rules. That represents a threat, a threat to the United States.
We've got the problem of Iran here, another unpredictable regime, whose sole goal is to destabilize other countries and destabilize this region, and try to develop a nuclear capability. We are not going to let that happen. It represents a threat.
The turmoil here in the Middle East, Syria, other countries that are going through tremendous internal turmoil.
The whole threat of cyber-attacks. We're living in a world now where part and parcel of a military attack is going to involve cyber. Cyber can be used to cripple a country. It can take down a power grid system. You can take down your financial system. You can take down our government systems. It can cripple a country. So, we've got to be prepared to deal with that.
So, I'm facing a lot of threats. And the United States has to be strong enough to confront every one of those threats.
I'm just a simple unfrozen caveman who went to grad school, but I don't see the tide of war receding too much. Not enough to take a victory dance and declare mission accomplished, anyway.
But will we be strong enough? Or is our power what is receding?
We have a strategy, you know:
So, the strategy we developed, very briefly, involves five key elements.
One, we are going to be smaller. We're going to be leaner. That's a reality, coming out of these wars. But we have to be agile, we've got to be deployable, we've got to be flexible, we've got to be able to move quickly, we've got to be on the cutting edge of technology.
Secondly, we've got to have force projection in those areas where we face the worst problems.
So, we are going to have force projection in the Pacific, in order to confront North Korea, in order to deal with the challenges we face in that Asia-Pacific region, which is so important to our economy and to our future.
And we're going to have force projection here in the Middle East, where you're at. The fact is, we have a large force projection right now in the Middle East. I've got 50,000 troops located in the Middle East. I've got almost 30-plus ships that are located in this region. I've got bombers. I've got fighter planes. I've got airlift. Because we have to be prepared to deal with the contingencies in this region as well.
Thirdly, we've got to have a presence elsewhere in the world. We can't just walk away from the rest of the world. So, how do we deal with that in Latin America, in Africa, in Europe?
What we've recommended is a rotational presence, where we send units into those countries to exercise, to train, to develop their capabilities, to develop new alliances, new partnerships, so that we're engaged in the rest of the world as well. We're doing that through special forces. We do it through the Marines. We're going to do it through the Army. We're going to do it through other elements of the services.
Fourthly, we got to defeat more than one enemy at a time. If we're in a land war in Korea and the Straits of Hormuz are closed, we've got to deal with both of those kinds of challenges. And we can do that.
And, lastly, we can't just cut. We've got to invest: invest in the future, invest in space, invest in unmanned systems, invest in special forces, invest in cyber, invest in the ability to mobilize quickly, invest in maintaining an industrial base so that if we do go to war, we will have the industries we need in order to make sure that we're fully ready to go to war. I don't want to contract out to -- our defense systems to other countries.
We're going to be smaller. Yes. Our Air Force will have fewer aircraft. Our Navy is shrinking. The Marines are losing combat units. And our Army is being cut back to just about pre-9/11 force structure. I think that the troop numbers will be higher, which will address the issue of our pre-9/11 units being undermanned at our allowed end strength then. That's not a strategy, but a fact of life.
I'm not sure what "leaner" means. Panetta already said "smaller". In the past it meant a higher tooth-to-tail (shooters to supporters) ratio. But if we are also making sure that our smaller, lighter, but more advanced military can move around the globe from bases in America faster, that implies a stronger supporting logistics tail to enable the shooters to get into the field.
And let me say that taking a month to move two Patriot batteries from our bases in Germany to Turkey doesn't fill me with confidence on this score.
Moving quickly certainly requires our leaders to be quick to order troop movements. That isn't a force structure issue, correct? And I hope that we don't create a military able to move a small force fast right into the jaws of defeat, like British troops disembarking from their transport ships at Singapore in 1942 only to march straight into Japanese captivity.
Second, we will have forward deployed forces in Northeast Asia and in the Middle East. Mostly naval and air power. Ground power is minimal, with a single ground combat brigade in South Korea; and in Central Command I think we are talking a single combat brigade in Kuwait and an afloat marine battalion task force (MEU).
Plus our troops fighting in Afghanistan, of course.
There are troops nearby, a Marine regiment in Okinawa (moving to Guam) and a couple brigades in Western Europe that could move to CENTCOM. Plus prepositioned stocks in both regions and ships with more equipment and supplies that could be moved to either area.
Luckily, South Korean military power compared to North Korea is great. South Korea needs our air power, recon, missile strike, and air defense capabilities more than they need ground combat units.
Right now, Iran is weak. Even though it would take us time to reinforce Kuwait or Iraq with ground forces, I imagine we could do the job even if part of the job involves retaking lost ground. As time goes on, while Iran is under sanctions, Iraq can only get stronger and make the Iranian threat lessen.
So I'm not concerned about not having ground forces forward deployed. And I worry about having naval and air forces forward deployed in too great a strength where they can be a tempting target for an enemy surprise attack. In CENTCOM, that applies to naval forces within the Persian Gulf. And in PACOM, that applies to forces too close to China. Which is why I like moving Marines to Guam.
As I've gone on about before, I'd rather have five brigades in Europe to be able to react to events in the arc of crisis from West Africa to Central Asia. That isn't happening.
The third part is that for areas outside of old NATO, the western Pacific, and the Middle East, instead of units forward deployed we'll rotate units into bases for training with host forces. This will keep the bases "warm" and enable us to quickly reinforce that area. Of course, in theory this provided a target for an enemy to strike in order to prevent us from moving units in, but that's a worst-case scenario and in many areas not really relevant.
On the fourth part, Secretary Panetta obscures a reduction in capabilities by saying we'd have to be able to fight multiple threats at once--like a ground war against North Korea and a naval/air war in the Persian Gulf. What the heck, why not toss in an air war over Kosovo again? That's three!
The fact is, we are reducing our goal to fight more than one ground war at a time. Sure, we didn't have a real two-war force structure even before 9/11. What we had was the ability to fight two ground wars "nearly simultaneously." The idea was "win-hold-win." Commit fully in one theater to win while we hold off the enemy in the second theater; and then shift forces from the theater we won in to the theater we are holding in to win.
That's largely what we did with Iraq and Afghanistan, in part. The other part is that Afghanistan didn't really deteriorate until after 2006 when Pakistan reopened their territory for jihadis and after 2007 when al Qaeda admitted defeat in Iraq. So it wasn't until 2008 that we could afford to start ramping up troop strength in Afghanistan in reaction to Taliban gains.
But now we simply say that we can fight one ground war. Whether that implies that we could scrape up enough to hold in a second theater or whether it gives the administration room to cut the Army more and still retain that single-war standard is unclear to me. I can guess, of course.
But remember that we will now have to decide in a crisis whether we can afford to commit our single-war ground forces to the fight and risk another threat take advantage of that commitment to strike us elsewhere. Even having a minimal "hold" capability while we "win" elsewhere gives us a little insurance against fighting two wars at once.
Finally, we need to maintain our technological edge and the ability to build advanced weapons. Being smaller, that is necessary. And part of our modern tradition to spend money to avoid spending lives. But with our budget problems, will we invest in the research to make advanced weapons and actually equip our forces with advanced weapons?
Or is this an excuse to make the military smaller? Already, the glide path of the Navy--with investments in those advanced systems--is toward a much smaller fleet. At what point do we say numbers matter? The British Expeditionary Force in France in 1914 was the most proficient fighting force in the fight, man-for-man. But it got ground down and lost the high quality men under assault by competent German troops, including reservists, thrown at them in large numbers.
Sure, I'd rather have a smaller force that is capable of fighting rather than a larger "hollow" force that only appears capable of fighting. Leaders won't know the difference and might order that force into action in the belief it is capable.
But have no doubt that our military power is receding even though the threats around us don't appear to be receding much at all.
