It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most adaptable to change.--Charles Darwin

Strategy is always simple, but it is not for that reason easy.--Karl von Clausewitz

Since the days of Athens and Sparta history is replete with states that have acquired pre-eminence, have then become complacent in their moment of triumph, and have thereby failed to recognize and to correct emerging weaknesses. There is at least a growing risk that the United States, given its present foreign policy course, will follow in this unhappy tradition. The danger lies in the developing mismatch among our foreign policy ambitions, our strategy, our forces, and the resources we are prepared to devote to achieving our foreign policy and defense goals.

That is not to say that the dangers are imminent, or that the United States, like those earlier great powers, faces the prospect of being defeated or overrun. For a long time, we shall have far too much raw power for such an outcome. Yet, unless we pay attention to the emerging mismatch, over time we are likely to suffer foreign policy and military setbacks--avoidable setbacks. We can, no doubt, carry on for a few more years on our present course without undue harm resulting. Ultimately, however, our neglect of deeper seated problems will catch up with us.

The prevailing condition of American preponderance, in which few regions of the world are beyond our reach or influence, is not only exceptional but artificial. It was brought about by the sudden and unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of Cold War bipolarity. Inevitably, this exceptional period must fade, and to that we shall have to adjust. But beyond that inevitable adjustment, we shall have to make a fundamental choice among (1) spending far more on defense than we are spending, (2) retrenching on our present, ambitious foreign policy, and (3) accepting the higher levels of international risk involved in maintaining our existing commitments while allowing our defense capability to decline, which would tempt others to challenge us. We shall be forced to make that choice because of the developing strategy-forces-budget mismatch. Sooner rather than later, it will be a case of raise the anchor or lower the ship.

The Underlying Resource Problem

The first element in the emerging mismatch is the prosaic one of resources. The United States has embraced the role of the world's principal stabilizing power, the one universal power. Yet military spending continues to decline both relatively and absolutely. Even now, the resources we are prepared to devote to defense are, at best, only marginally adequate for our mission--even in the favorable and exceptional circumstances of U.S. preponderance and the absence of a peer-competitor. Since we are now living on capital, extensively if not recklessly, the condition of the military services must inevitably deteriorate--unless there is a significant increase in spending authority. Such an increase is precluded by the existing budget agreements, which, at best, hold military spending flat. In truth, there continues to be a slow diminution in real terms.

Currently, the United States spends barely more than 3 percent of its gross domestic product on defense. There is no way that the United States can sustain over time the forces that the Clinton administration states to be essential--or the foreign policy that those forces support--on 3 percent of the GDP. That is not a matter of analysis; it is simple arithmetic. To continue to fulfill our present commitments and to re-equip the approved force levels for the more challenging years of the next century would require roughly 4 percent of the GDP. That should not appear as a surprising figure for a nation that aspires to be the sole universal power. Even before Pearl Harbor, in Fiscal Year 1941, the United States spent 4.1 percent of its GDP on defense. Yet despite growing requirements for procurement funding to re-equip the forces, increasingly tenuous states of readiness, and a growing problem in recruitment and retention of military personnel, the percentage of GDP projected to be spent on defense continues to decline to 2.6 percent in FY 2002. Quite simply, with these budgetary limits there is no way to get there--that point in the twenty-first century when the United States should be able to field the forces the administration states are required to meet the military challenges--from here.

Throughout this decade, we have been shielded from the necessity of major procurement expenditures, first, by the substantial shrinkage of the force structure and, second, by allowing the principal equipments inherited from the Cold War years to age. Obviously, such action is tolerable only in the short run. The United States now spends just over $40 billion a year on procurement. Yet depreciation on our military equipment (at replacement cost) runs to over $100 billion per year. Moreover, there is the additional cost of building an appropriate inventory of sophisticated munitions, and, in the longer run, the need to maintain, and ultimately update or replace, hardware-related facilities for development and testing.

In short, the United States has been enjoying an extended procurement holiday. Quite early in the next century, at the latest, we shall be obliged to spend far greater sums on procurement. Alternatively, we can watch the force structure itself age and erode--until it will no longer be capable of sustaining the ambitious world role that we have embraced.

Take the case of the Navy. At our current rate of procurement, some six ships a year, the Navy would shrink to a force of just over two hundred ships--a reduction of more than 60 percent from the Reagan years. Would such a force be sufficient to provide the worldwide presence to match our responsibilities, in a period in which the challenge will certainly have grown much more formidable than it is in today's favorable circumstances? The question is almost rhetorical. The answer is: obviously not. It would make painfully true, once again, Kipling's observation early in the century: "Far-flung our navies melt away." Yet, what has been stated for Navy ships is probably equally pertinent and more pressing for tactical aircraft and, down the line, for ground forces equipment.

What are the prospects? They do not appear particularly promising. In the period after 2010 the Department of Defense (DOD) believes that a new peer-competitor of the United States may emerge. That would also be the time, according to recent pronouncements, when we shall be proceeding to expand NATO to include portions of the former Soviet Union. But as well, it will be the time when expenditures on entitlements programs will be escalating, as the baby boom retires--and the overall budget is projected to go severely into deficit. And last, it is at that very same time that the effects of the aging of major items of equipment and the erosion of our military capabilities will become apparent. Unless we were to alter our present course, in that combination of circumstances we would have no prudent choice but to retrench on our foreign policy objectives and commitments.

Budgets are flexible. Thus we might solve the problem of the arrears in procurement through reallocation. In theory, we could reduce funds for operations and further shrink the present force structure--and thereby provide more funds for modernization. While in principle we should be able to do so, in practice we would encounter formidable difficulties. The operations tempo of the U.S. Armed Forces is now at an all-time peak for peacetime. Force deployment in the post-Cold War years, driven by "military operations other than war", has been far more frequent, far larger, and of far longer duration than during the Cold War itself. That is a reflection of our expanded foreign policy role and of our willingness, in practice if not in theory, regularly to serve as the world's policeman. The myriad problems of ethnic unrest, internal conflict, and occasional external aggression have regularly, though not invariably, resulted in a U.S. response. The result is an awesomely high operation tempo for the services--one which they are sustaining only with difficulty and at a higher long-run cost in readiness, morale, and retention rates. In the case of the Army, a recent count showed 34,000 soldiers on temporary duty in eighty-one countries. Included in this count are many reservists. How long they will be prepared to accept being taken away from their families and their careers remains to be seen.

The effects on morale and, consequently, retention rates are particularly worrisome. The lower the retention rate, the higher the exodus of the more qualified personnel from the services tends to be. Pilot retention is particularly a problem. In the past, pilots for the most were eager to stay in the military. But with lowered morale, extended time away from their families, and the availability of high-paying, fixed-hour jobs with the airlines, they have been departing in droves. Last year, only 36 percent of Air Force pilots agreed to stay on, down from 60 percent two years earlier. Though the Air Force has raised the bonus offer from $60,000 to $110,000 for a five-year extension, there is no sign that it will be able to reach its 50 percent goal for retention. The Navy is reported to be in even worse shape. One must bear in mind that the cost of training a pilot is roughly $6 million. So, even aside from the implications for force readiness, the costs are high. In practice, that means a continuous subsidy by the services to the airlines.

The upshot is that the existing force structure is under strain given the present level of activity. Further shrinkage of the force structure would seem implausible as a way of obtaining savings to fund the necessary re-equipping of the services in the decades ahead. It is also an irony that the smaller the force structure, the greater is the cost in time in moving the forces around and the higher tends to be the operation tempo rate.

To be sure, that tempo could be trimmed. We should certainly review the training regime of the services, which has not changed since the end of the Cold War. With the Goldwater-Nichols Act, the regional commanders-in-chief have added on additional requirements, while the service requirements have not notably shrunk. We do need an overall review to see whether the operation tempo rate can be reduced. But any such reduction would only be at the margin. We must recognize that, given our present foreign policy aspirations, we can only trim rather than substantially reduce it. As long as this is the case, any hankering to reduce substantially the force structure or the costs of operations remains unachievable.

Since the Bottom-Up Review of 1993, the administration's preferred route for freeing up the resources to provide the funds needed for the procurement account has been the shrinkage of the Cold War infrastructure. The logic is impeccable. The existing base structure could readily support two or three times present force levels. In this decade alone, the force structure has been cut by 40 percent, while the infrastructure has been reduced by only 22 percent.
But while the logic is impeccable, the politics of base reduction, always difficult, is becoming virtually impossible. Base reduction has thus become a kind of deus ex machina for budget planners--an increasingly vain hope.

Everyone is for base reduction--excepting the locals and those who represent them, the politicians. Base closure invariably encounters local resistance. Even when it is agreed to close a base, it takes far longer and achieves less near-term savings than projected.

In an admirable example of self-restraint, the Congress in 1988 created a procedure for closing bases, Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC), in which the decisions of a commission have to be accepted or rejected in their entirety. All went well until 1996, when the administration tried to fend off the political fallout from closing two major bases, McClellan in California and Kelly in Texas. Since then, the Congress, expressing distrust for the administration, has refused to authorize additional BRACs.

Politics is the art of the possible. While I applaud the closing of additional bases, I find myself increasingly skeptical about those who would treat base closure as a cornucopia that will provide the funds for re-equipping the forces. Increasingly, it has become an excuse for not facing up to the arrears in procurement funding. There are still some twenty major domestic bases to be closed, left over from the BRAC of 1993. To this point, the process has generated less than $6 billion in savings. One notes that the recent Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) emphasized substantial reductions in civilian personnel. Yet such reductions were dependent upon a base-closing exercise that Congress had earlier announced it would reject, and which it shows no sign of reconsidering. Thus, admirable as a further assault on our oversized infrastructure may be, it holds little prospect for generating the substantial additional savings needed to re-equip the forces.

Another initiative that is similarly attractive in theory but elusive in practice is the outsourcing of selected defense activities to the private sector. In theory, one could obtain greater efficiencies and thereby resource savings that could then be diverted to higher priority military functions. The QDR relied heavily on outsourcing to avoid having to recommend large force structure reductions; subsequently the National Defense Panel, mandated by Congress to review the QDR, has urged the outsourcing of some 600,000 positions in the Department of Defense, including the civilianization of certain active military positions. Here again, the practical difficulties are substantial. While pushing outsourcing prudently is sensible and attractive, it means the elimination of civil service jobs. To that the resistance has always been formidable. The latest set of proposals for civil service reform, intended to strengthen management's ability to eliminate poor performance and to provide better incentives for effective performance, has just come crashing down as a result of union lobbying and partisan sniping.

Once again, one should not look to a transformation of the way we conduct our political affairs as a serious prospective source of budgetary manna from heaven to provide the resources to cure our arrears in defense. The American political system will continue to be based upon a dispersion of power in which consensus is more highly valued than efficiency. To obtain the resources necessary to re-equip the forces, we shall need to shrink our foreign policies or (eventually) to increase defense spending. Given our present foreign policy ambitions and our capped defense budget, we cannot get from here to there.

The New Strategic Context

Why does the U.S. Department of Defense continue to require what critics argue are excessive resources? A cacophony of voices argue that (1) the Cold War is over, (2) the principal threat has disappeared, (3) the United States has a substantial edge in military technology, and (4) the United States spends more on its defense establishment (in dollar terms) than all the other militarily significant powers combined. Why, they plaintively inquire, does the DOD require such vast resources?

It is a reasonable question and the answer is complex. In the first place, the United States now regards itself as the single universal power. Only the United States is required simultaneously to balance the substantial nuclear forces remaining in Russia, to maintain worldwide intelligence capabilities, to engage in peacekeeping or peace-enforcing operations in a substantial part of the world, to maintain forces to intervene quickly in several contingencies at vast distances from the United States, to transport safely and sustain those forces in those places, and to preserve freedom of the seas. It is a formidable list--and it goes on. There are newly emerging requirements including missile defense, coping with terrorist threats, and dealing with the challenges and possibilities of Information Warfare. All these could require significant additional resources. That is the price to be paid by a nation that aspires to be the single universal power.

Moreover, the nation in question is a democracy, in which the public must continuously support the general outlines of its foreign policy. Not only that, but it is one that is physically far removed from most of the turbulence or the conflicts in which its leaders desire to intervene. Since the end of the Cold War, the public has lost most of its interest in foreign policy. While the elites seem eager to pay the price of serving as the world's principal stabilizing power, the public is indifferent, if not skeptical.

That means that the requirement imposed by the public on the government is low casualties in intervention. A quick success is preferable, but if an operation is to be dragged out casualties must be low. Otherwise the operation should be avoided or terminated. The public is not prepared to tolerate significant casualties unless there is a direct threat to the United States or its principal allies, or what will be seen as an obvious threat to our interests. Thus, public expectations dramatically narrow the room for maneuver for U.S. leaders. Such are the "lessons" not only from Vietnam, but from Lebanon, Somalia, and Bosnia.

This implies that the United States must retain the substantial edge in military technology that it demonstrated during the Gulf War. It is that edge, stunning to Saddam Hussein and his generals, that permitted an overwhelming victory with low casualties. Perhaps the U.S. public was spoiled by the Gulf War and has exaggerated expectations regarding how low casualties can regularly be kept in military engagements. Yet that is the psychological reality that our leadership faces.

One should note that such an edge in technology is continuously eroding. The showcasing of such technologies during the Gulf War means that no one will ever again be surprised. The military utility of the Global Positioning System (which provides precise location, velocity, and time to users through signals from our system of twenty-four satellites), satellite photography and other sensors, near-instant communications, Stealth aircraft, and precision-guided weapons is now widely understood. All these gave the United States the Dominant Battlefield Awareness and the Battlefield Dominance that resulted in rapid victory and low casualties.

Technical information is more readily available through the Internet and journals. Classification barriers have been reduced and sometimes eliminated. We now make a virtue of "openness." A globalized economy means that the components of these new technologies are more readily accessible to others, and that our ability to hold them back is reduced. Indeed, services with high military utility are increasingly available commercially and are sometimes free. Signals from the Global Positioning System are available to all. Satellite photography is available at a price. Information on weapons of mass destruction--chemical, biological, and even nuclear--is available to a distressing extent.

The upshot is that the challenge to our international mission is increasing. Yet it is the public constraint on that mission that remains paramount: low casualties. The inference is quite clear. For this mission to remain viable, we must continue to sustain an impressive edge in military technology.

Maintaining such an edge will neither be easy nor cheap. As the nation that has become, before all others, critically dependent upon Information Technology, the United States is now potentially more vulnerable to Information Warfare than other countries. Both its military services and critical civilian infrastructures have come to rely on Information Technology. In light of that degree of reliance, we must be vigilant about our vulnerabilities and develop protective barriers and/or redundancy so that we continue to have an edge.

In brief, we must continue to invest for the long run--and resist the pressure to focus on the short run. To fail to do so is to court disaster. Yet as we look to the future, it is not clear that we are sufficiently attending to our emerging vulnerabilities or our potential strengths.

To maintain our position as the world's leading military power capable of action almost everywhere, we need to sustain that edge in military technology for an additional reason--to deflect and then minimize direct challenges. To no inconsiderable extent the position of a leading power is based upon awe--the conviction that any military provocation will be quickly punished (as was Saddam's in the Gulf War). The loss of the capacity to inspire awe makes a challenge more likely. In order to deter one must be able to intimidate, and to intimidate one must appear formidable. Thus the requirement for maintaining the capacity to awe becomes the counterpart of the American public's insistence on low casualties. The key to both is our edge in technology. The loss of that edge would mean both weakened deterrence and a growing reluctance of the American people to support the ambitious foreign policy that we have now embraced.

Regrettably, our present policy and international position create another vulnerability, which we can only mitigate but not avoid. There is a fundamental disparity between "operations other than war", notably peacekeeping, and the qualities and readiness essential for war-fighting. In peacekeeping operations, one must hesitate before using force, one should not be quick on the trigger. In combat a belated response means casualties or an overrun position. Officers who show the restraint and sensitivity desirable in peacekeeping operations--and thereby gain promotions--may be the very ones who lack the capacity for command in combat. Troops who have been trained for restraint in peacekeeping operations are likely to be unready for war-fighting. Therein lies the potential for trouble, and yet, given our dual responsibilities, there is no way wholly to avoid such trouble. All that one can do is to be aware of the dilemma--and never to forget that peacekeeping and war-fighting are in some sense in conflict. Since the ultimate mission and the ultimate test for the armed forces is war-fighting, we must strive to reduce the penalties imposed on our war-fighting capacity by peacekeeping. Ideally we should keep the forces designated for these distinct missions separated, and thereby minimize the contamination of our forces' war-fighting readiness by peacekeeping operations. Still, as the force structure shrinks, such separation becomes increasingly difficult.

A Transformed Military?

We now turn from the dramatic changes in the strategic environment to how the military establishment should react so as to achieve America's political objectives efficiently and at minimal cost, particularly in casualties. This brings us to what has been called the revolution in military affairs, a development that is part reality and part promise. The National Defense Panel correctly states that we are on "the cusp of a military revolution", for as of now the revolution is partly hyperbole and remains incomplete. The basis for such a revolution has been created by the immense technical advances in computers, telecommunications, microelectronics, sensors, and precision-guided munitions. These are the new military technologies that were first unveiled in the Gulf War. Their dramatic role in achieving rapid success in that war spurred talk about the revolution, and convinced some that it was an accomplished fact. For a number of reasons that conclusion is premature.

First, and as I have already pointed out, in that war there was a large element of surprise, not only about individual elements, but the overall military effectiveness resulting from their integration. That permitted our military leadership to dominate the battlefield while Iraq's unfortunate generals had little awareness of what was transpiring. Never again shall we achieve that degree of surprise. Others will develop countermeasures and tactics with which we shall have to contend. Others will also acquire these technologies, so that we shall no longer be able so readily to exploit their advantages.

Second, conditions in the Persian Gulf--clear skies and deserts--were almost ideal for the exploitation. Heavy cloud cover and dense vegetation, as in tropical forests, would reduce the usefulness of these technologies. The contrast to conditions in Vietnam is frequently mentioned.

Third, we have not been prepared to invest the resources fully to exploit these new technologies. Inventories of sophisticated munitions, for example, remain quite modest. Thus, if military operations were extended, we could run short, and much of the potential advantages of these technologies for combat could evaporate.

Fourth and most importantly, the lessons drawn from the Gulf War have not been absorbed into military strategy and doctrine. I find it curious, if not ironical, that the United States, which developed and then exploited these new military technologies in the Gulf War, has failed fully to grasp one of the principal lessons from that war. I refer to the immense success of the air offensive prior to and during the 100-hour ground war. The six weeks of coordinated air attacks prior to the launching of the counteroffensive on the ground significantly reduced the combat power of Iraq's forces--and continued to do so during the four days of the ground war. Nonetheless, to date the U.S. military establishment has yet to absorb the lessons of the immense success of the air war into either doctrine or war plans.
The potential of the air campaign in most if not all military campaigns is central to adjustments of strategy. Air power is not just ancillary to the ground counteroffensive. When we have air superiority, it too can systematically destroy enemy ground forces. And it can do so at a far lower cost in American blood. And that may be essential for retaining public support for America's expanded international role.

Despite all our current talk of "jointness", the services have yet to formulate a sufficiently shared vision of our military future. In part, the Air Force itself has been remiss. Thanks to so many years of treating "strategic" and "nuclear" as synonymous, it has failed to analyze and articulate the strategic role that TacAir can play.

The Army, too, has been resistant. In part it is correct in pointing out that the success of air power in the Gulf is not necessarily repeatable, or repeatable to the same extent, under different conditions. To be sure, it is also in part in the service's interest. Still, the Army has been slow to accept the enormous potential of air power in grinding down enemy ground forces--thereby reducing Army casualties and easing the Army's task.

It remains true that air power "cannot do the job alone." That is right--but irrelevant. In most military operations it can do a substantial job in obtaining a quick victory with low casualties. While that is crucial to America's international mission, some Army officers have been reluctant to accept the altered role that air power can play. Happily, our former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Andrew Goodpaster, has not been among them. In a recent speech, he urged "pressing forward with advanced technology, especially for air attack; exploiting 'Stealth' in order to hold our losses to a minimum."

Congress in this New Era has repeatedly sought alternative strategies from the Pentagon. Its motive may have been to achieve greater military effectiveness without providing additional resources. To be sure, the hope that we can preserve our present military preponderance without a substantial increase in defense spending is unsustainable. But the quest for alternative strategies is legitimate, so long as one does not expect miracles. There is no strategic gimmick that will permit us to maintain military dominance in the absence of superior forces.

The full integration and exploitation of new military technology permit us to explore alternative strategies. In particular, the effectiveness of air power has increased so much in degree that it has almost become a difference in kind. In a sense it has finally achieved the attributes that air power enthusiasts prematurely claimed over the years. So long as the United States retains air dominance, we can damage or destroy the enemy's combat power at a low cost in casualties.

The altered strategic role that air power can play must, however, be understood and appreciated. It is ironic that those who comment--and regularly complain--that roughly 40 percent of the future procurement budgets would go to TacAir have not fully grasped the potential advantages that air power confers. It is also true that if we are to exploit those advantages, air power needs to be amply funded. If air power is to play a crucial role in American strategy, it is doubtful whether we should allow our inventories of precision-guided munitions to remain as low as they are. It is a simple fact, though an ineluctable one, that in so far as inventories are constrained, and are expected to remain constrained, an alteration of military plans will be required--and of a kind that will make such plans less effective. Air power may be strategically crucial in theory, but, if it cannot deliver in practice, military planners cannot rely on it. In a sense, the size of inventories is in itself a strategic choice.

In this altered strategic world, several admonitions remain in order. First, it is essential that the United States remains ahead of other nations, not only in the exploitation of Information Warfare, but also in defensive measures. Other nations are now industriously studying how to exploit Information Warfare. That secret is now out. We must not only be on guard, but we must steadily raise our guard.

Second, we must continuously examine whether our growing dependence on new technologies may result in over-dependence and thus create a critical vulnerability. Given our current international role, these technologies are essential as force multipliers. But neutralization by others of our exploitation of them would immediately place us at a disadvantage. Consequently, we must examine to what extent we should hedge such potential vulnerabilities--and, in doing so, recognize that such hedging will be costly. To hedge against the neutralization of force multipliers, one can, of course, maintain larger forces. Yet, if one were totally to compensate in this manner, one would forfeit the cost benefits (though not the benefits in effectiveness) embodied in the hoped-for revolution in military affairs.

We need to understand better both the risks and the opportunities as we examine alternative strategies. But one thing should be clear: if we are to enjoy the full benefits of a strategy, we must make a sufficient investment in it. At the moment we are talking about and pursuing a transformed military, but not pursuing it seriously enough. Earlier, it was indicated why we shall be unable to sustain our present position of military advantage on the projected levels of defense spending. One can always do with less--until one needs it.

For some years the Clinton administration has argued that with the Cold War over we no longer require an overarching strategy in foreign policy. Indeed, it is at least arguable that foreign policy can be approached on a "case-by-case" basis. But it is clear that defense policy and the defense posture should not be. They should--and must--reflect a coherent whole. Especially is this true for the United States--given the international responsibilities that have now been thrust upon us, and that we have chosen to accept.