Where We Stand: Our Principles On Transforming the U.S. Armed Forces

The overstretching of America’s armed forces, caused by a poor appreciation of emerging roles and missions, devastated military readiness in the 1990s and continues to threaten successful military transformation. After nearly a decade, by the beginning of 2005, the United States will finally have most of its troops out of Bosnia–Herzegovina. From the early 1990s to the present, the United States has spent billions of dollars on operations other than warfare, including costly peacekeeping, nation building, and interventions in regions of the world that had little impact on vital U.S. interests. Furthermore, other nations, or groups of nations, were fully capable of taking the lead in most of these interventions. Aside from the political problems associated with intervening in the internal affairs of other nations, these interventions divert important resources from more important Pentagon programs. Over the next four years, the Administration should be very careful not to make the same mistakes.

Even if commitments associated with the war on terrorism should decrease, the United States should not become militarily involved in the kind of missions that it took on in the 1990s. Instead, it should continue to rely on the model that was developed during the Australian-led intervention in East Timor and followed once again in Liberia. In both cases, the United States supported the efforts with its unique capabilities, but the overall efforts were led by regional interests.

The Administration must continue to transform its military forces (conventional, space, and nuclear) by developing the right set of skills and capabilities to meet the security threats of the 21st century while retaining robust force levels and adequate funding for the military. This will require a commitment by both Congress and the Administration to strike a balance among sustaining current forces, modernizing them appropriately to meet present needs, and investing in the research, development, and acquisition of revolutionary technologies and operational practices that will enable America to maintain an overwhelming comparative military advantage.

For the first time since 1999, pressure to decrease defense spending has begun to mount, and it is likely to grow over the next four years. This would be a mistake. Although defense spending has increased since the Clinton Administration, chronic underfunding persists, burdening all services. Even the most recent budget has shortfalls, including underfunding for such important programs as vehicle armor, military construction, aircraft survivability equipment, and ballistic missile submarine communications. The fact is that the U.S. military is heavily committed. Unless Congress and the President want to sacrifice the war on terrorism, U.S. commitments to allies, near-term readiness, or the ability to prepare for the future, they must maintain robust defense budgets.

The harsh reality is that the Pentagon is simultaneously fighting a global war, maintaining commitments that predate September 11, upholding peacekeeping commitments, transforming into a 21st century fighting force, and recovering from a decade of underfunding and overuse. These efforts cost money. Maintaining an active, qualified force is expensive, but it is also a sound and affordable investment. The United States can afford to defend itself. The defense budget, currently 3.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), is well within historic norms as a percentage of GDP. In every year from 1941 to 1994, except for 1948, the United States spent over 4 percent of GDP on national security.

The U.S. global basing infrastructure, both domestic and foreign, must be recalibrated to reflect America’s changing and unpredictable national security requirements. President George W. Bush has undertaken two initiatives that will achieve this critical goal.He is attempting to institute another round of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) at home and to reconfigure America’s basing infrastructure abroad. This basing transformation is necessary for several reasons:

1. The current base structure was developed to defend against a largely static and predictable enemy—the Soviet Union—that no longer exists;
2. Today’s threats, in stark contrast to those past, are dynamic and unpredictable, and they demand flexibility that is currently lacking;
3. A flexible basing structure will promote adaptability in a world of diverse political, strategic, and diplomatic interests;
4. America’s commitment to regional stability can no longer be measured by manpower alone;
5. More efficient global basing infrastructure will free manpower resources and help to alleviate personnel strains; and
6. Eliminating excess basing infrastructure will free resources that can be reinvested in the Pentagon’s critical transformation initiatives.
Regrettably, there is significant political opposition to both of these important initiatives. Therefore, it will be critically important that the President push these initiatives over the next four years.

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While most transformation initiatives center on conventional forces, the United States must also transform its nuclear force. It must develop a nuclear arsenal that adequately reflects the modern world. The reality is that the United States continues to maintain a Cold War nuclear arsenal despite the fact that the Cold War has ended: Russia has taken control of the Soviet nuclear arsenal and has agreed to drastic reductions in strategic arms. China has begun a nuclear modernization program. India and Pakistan have tested nuclear weapons, and nations like Iran and North Korea have edged closer to becoming nuclear states. Further, al-Qaeda has demonstrated that America’s adversaries are both willing and able to inflict mass casualties on U.S. soil.

It is time to reevaluate the role of nuclear weapons in national security policy, especially the utility of low-yield tactical nuclear weapons. Traditionally, these weapons have been necessary to counter an adversary with very large land forces that could overrun America’s more expeditionary forces. While this requirement endures, tactical nuclear weapons may also be the best way to address the new set of threats.

A tactical nuclear force, for example, would counter any battlefield advantage an adversary might gain from striking U.S. and allied forces with weapons of mass destruction and thus deter an adversary from using such weapons. An enemy leader might not fear America’s conventional response to the use of such weapons, believing that his forces could withstand or defeat the United States. Indeed, use of chemical or biological weapons might be central to an enemy’s strategy.

Deterrence in the modern world is also changing. The United States finds itself in a unique historical position whereby it actually cares more about the local populations of adversarial states then the leaders of those states do. The result is that any threat to retaliate with strategic nuclear weapons loses credibility because an enemy leader may calculate that the United States would not kill millions of innocent civilians. The flexibility that would result from introducing smaller nuclear weapons into the strategic equation will increase deterrence by giving added credibility to America’s arsenal.Arguably, this is precisely what happened in the first Gulf War. During that conflict, the Bush Administration purposefully gave the impression that any use of chemical or biological weapons by Saddam Hussein might result in a tactical nuclear response.

Additionally, it will be vitally important that the United States redevelop a nuclear weapons research and maintenance capability. The result of the United States’ self-imposed moratorium on nuclear weapons testing, which it has upheld for over a decade, has been a generation of nuclear scientists that have never actually exploded a nuclear weapon and a degradation of the nuclear weapons maintenance complex. This has made it essential that the United States maintain a capable nuclear weapons testing complex that can be used in short order in case a problem with the nuclear arsenal is discovered. Regrettably, the complex needs extensive modernization. Therefore, it will be critically important for the United States to reinvest in its nuclear weapons complex over the next four years.While nuclear weapons and nuclear policy are normally associated with the Cold War, the fact is that those elements of national security policy remain as important as ever.

A significant number of U.S. military space programs are facing problems. For example, the Space-Based Infrared-High (SBIRS-High) has been delayed and has exceeded its budget. The Space-Based Radar program has faced criticism and funding reductions in Congress. Space-based missile defense development has received inadequate funding and guidance from the Missile Defense Agency. Among the steps that the Administration could take are developing launchers that lower the cost of putting payloads in space, obtaining new micro-satellite technologies, and using Brilliant Pebbles technology to obtain space-based missile defense interceptors.

In the Department of Defense, the primary responsibility for pursuing these and similar programs falls to the Under Secretary of the Air Force. In Congress, the focus should be on providing adequate funding to support military space programs. This is primarily the responsibility of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees and Defense Appropriations Subcommittees. Finally, maintaining momentum behind critical U.S. military space programs also requires not allowing them to become shackled by arms control initiatives. In most cases, arms control initiatives related to space should be deferred. The Administration should pursue such initiatives only in cases in which they would clearly give the U.S. military a competitive advantage in space.