The purpose of America's military is to fight wars and defeat enemy combat forces. Don't distract our armed forces by giving them non-military missions that downplay battlefield victory.
[Enemy efforts to avoid fighting American strengths] implies that future major-power wars are likely to be contests of will, stake, and risk-taking, involving coercion, blackmail, and brinkmanship at least as much as direct armed hostilities between general-purpose military forces.If America downgrades military capabilities with the aim of defeating enemies on the battlefield, our enemies will be able to think about defeating America in battle rather than find approaches that avoid American military strengths.
And if I may be so bold to point out, if enemies avoid fighting us as much as possible they forfeit the ability to make dramatic gains at our expense. And since America is basically on strategic defense to hold what we have and what our allies have, that's a good thing.
Still, this is a good point:
The Red theory of victory consists of two notions. First, that decisive military action by the United States to reverse a fait accompli can be prevented by exploiting divisions within and among its allies and the United States itself. And second, that the United States can be persuaded to cede some important regional interest rather than employ its full military potential because its stake is not sufficient to engage in sustained brinkmanship and competitive escalation. The Red concept of victory includes more than just seizing and holding some gain. It encompasses also the choice by Blue to terminate conflict on terms that sacrifice the interest it was defending, thereby showing America’s security guarantee to be unreliable.
If enemies attack, we can't let them get a partial victory and deter America from using its military power to reverse the enemy gains. This is exactly the point of my recent article about defending Taiwan that was published in Military Review.
And I've addressed this in regard to our Baltic state NATO allies.
If our enemies want to attack us but are trying to avoid fighting America directly notwithstanding their push to increase conventional warfighting abilities, we have other elements of our huge national security apparatus to tackle their non-military efforts. And use the military to defeat our enemy on the battlefield.
For God's sake, if our enemies fear our military that much, make them play our game and not their non-military game if they decide to go to war.
