Interesting article on the how geopolitical changes affect force structure and transformation. In this case the article is focused on US Forces but in my opinion the lessons are directly applicable the debate in this thread.
Enjoy,
Matthew.
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Force Structure
THE GEOPOLITICAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT
Force Structure
By George Friedman
Since it is clear that the war will continue regardless of the outcome of the presidential election, it is time to focus on the single most important strategic issue facing the United States: the size and composition of the U.S. armed forces. Unless jihadist opposition throughout the Islamic world ends suddenly, which is unlikely, the war will continue for several years. The U.S. military, however, is in no position to continue fighting the war with current forces -- particularly Army and Marine forces. Therefore, something has to give. To be more precise, there will be a massive increase in the size of the U.S. military in 2005.
In order to understand the cure, it is necessary to understand two symptoms of an underlying disease. The disease was a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of warfare after the Cold War. During the Cold War, the primary focus was on a global war with the Soviet Union, particularly involving high intensity conflict on the North German plain. Such a war required a large and balanced military, including naval and air power and substantial ground forces tasked globally.
It was understood that the end of the Cold War eliminated the requirement for this model. However, the new model that emerged had little to do with the reality the United States is experiencing today. The core geopolitical assumption was that the United States no longer faced the challenge of sustained ground combat in Eurasia. To American thinking, the precondition for such combat was the existence of a patron state -- the Soviet Union -- that would provide the wherewithal for second- and third-rank countries or guerrilla warfare for extended combat operations. No patron state, no extended combat operations.
This did not mean that the United States didn't expect to be engaged in wars in Eurasia. Throughout the 1990s, there was a constant deployment of forces. However, these deployments had three characteristics:
1. They were narrowly focused on one country at a time.
2. Significant combat was expected to terminate quickly.
3. They were elective operations -- the United States could choose or decline combat without affecting the national interest.
In sum, the United States controlled the scope, extent and tempo of its operations. It expected to be able to do this permanently. Put differently: The United States expected geographically confined conflicts of short duration as and when it elected to engage.
This strategic perception contained two operational principles. The first was the priority of technology over manpower. This has always been a priority for U.S. forces in Eurasia, where technical force multipliers alone made it possible for numerically inferior forces to fight. However, during the 1990s, the focus on force multipliers intensified overwhelmingly. Getting to the theater and defeating enemy forces quickly became paramount considerations. Crises came and went too rapidly to build up major ground forces, and the cost of major ground deployments was too high to justify under most circumstances. Kosovo was worth an air campaign. It was not worth a multi-divisional armored assault. Therefore, the United States became focused on a smaller ground force that was lighter and faster, and on the use of power as an alternative to ground forces
Second, given the intermittent nature of U.S. involvement, U.S. planners shifted from primary dependence on standing forces to much increased dependence on Reserve and National Guard forces. For some specialties now in high demand -- such as civil affairs -- the force consisted almost entirely of reservists. That meant that in order to bring the military to its minimal fighting capability, it had to begin by mobilizing Reserve forces for extensive periods of time.
Defense planners simply did not foresee what was about to happen. After Sept. 11, they found themselves in a war whose characteristics were the exact opposite of what they expected to be dealing with during the 1990s:
1. Rather than being narrowly focused one country at a time, the United States found itself engaged in substantial combat in two separate theaters of operation -- Afghanistan and Iraq -- as well as in other theaters simultaneously.
2. Significant combat did not terminate quickly, but has become open-ended, with new potential theaters of operation in the wings.
3. Operations have ceased to be elective -- assuming that they ever were. First, Sept. 11 created a military challenge that the United States could not decline. Second, whatever the wisdom of Iraq, it is now a highly active theater that is not about to go away. Declining combat is no longer an option, according to either U.S. President George W. Bush or Sen. John Kerry.
The mix of technology to manpower, and the relationship between active and Reserve forces are simply inappropriate to the war that is being fought.
The Need for More Forces
There are three phases of U.S. warfare: deployment of forces, destruction of enemy forces and occupation of enemy territory. U.S. military doctrine developed in the 1990s assumed that the greatest challenge was formed by the first two problems. In fact, as we have learned in this war, the United States might well have solved the first two problems, but it has not come to grips with the third. That by itself is not a criticism. Pacification, counterinsurgency and controlling the ground in a low-intensity conflict represent the toughest problems faced by the U.S. military or any military.
At the same time, it is an area to which the United States has paid the least attention. Occupation warfare is least amenable to technological solutions. But it must be said that compared to force projection and destruction, few technological efforts have been devoted to occupational warfare. Therefore, the occupation of countries has changed minimally over the past century. It requires the presence of ground forces in a highly dispersed and exposed mode, in numbers far in excess of those needed to defeat an enemy armored force. In other words, the force that was needed to defeat the Iraqi army is too small to pacify Iraq if there is substantial resistance. When we add to this the fact that Iraq is far from the only theater of operations the United States is or might be engaged in, it is obvious that more forces are necessary.
The 1990s solution was to reach into the various Reserve components. That is essentially what the war has been fought on since Sept. 11. Each service has used reservists to fill out the force. The problem with this strategy is that the Reserve force was recruited in the 1990s and agreed to serve based on the premises of the 1990s. Even those premises proved disruptive, as reservists were called up for multiple operations. However, just as the Pentagon did not anticipate that it would be fighting a multi-theater, multi-divisional war in Asia, its reservists did not expect to be continually called to extended active duty.
Clearly, the reservists signed up for whatever was required. Equally clearly, they did not expect what has happened. The Reserve consists of older, experienced troops, skewed toward higher ranks. They also tend to be heads of families, with children, mortgages and responsibilities. Some own small businesses that will fail without them. Others have bought homes they cannot pay for on military pay. Defense planners, having few options, are ignoring these realities and wreaking havoc in the lives of the reservists.
Therefore, the reservists will quit as soon as they can, as will active-duty soldiers. The military can issue stop-loss orders, essentially barring people from leaving the military. However, the United States cannot win this war with a captive force that is not being -- forget replenished -- expanded. The United States drew its forces down during the 1990s, expecting a certain geopolitical reality. A very different geopolitical reality exists. The administration is essentially trying bludgeon a force designed for the 1990s into a force for the 2000s. It can work for a while, but not for long. Within a year the United States will have an army that has either been hollowed out by discharges, or in which an insufficient force of men and women is being forced to carry the burden of a war that is going to go on for a while.
During World War II, troops left home and did not to return for years. This was mitigated by a sense of a universally shared fate. During Vietnam, a profoundly unfair draft was partly compensated for by the fact that a tour of duty took only one year and the draftees were out in two. Not only was there deep resentment, but just about the time the soldiers were getting good at their jobs, they went home.
The United States will expand its force, particularly its ground forces. It cannot use a Vietnam-style draft because that draft failed militarily -- it ruined effectiveness and unit cohesion. You cannot train today's military specialties in a few months, and then deploy troops to combat. The last thing needed in Iraq is cannon fodder. In an extended war, you must have an extended and highly trained force. You can simply take the force that already exists and force it to continue to serve indefinitely, but that doesn't solve the expansion problem. In fact, it makes it tougher to expand. You can have a czarist conscription policy -- a number of people will be randomly selected to serve for five, 10 or 20 years -- but that will go over like a lead balloon.
Expanding the Force
The force must be expanded. It must contain people who understand the commitment is extended and open-ended. It must contain people who will be trained in some specialties for a year, and then be available for deployment for years after that. The force must include young officers, as well as enlisted men. And these will be people who can readily get other civilian jobs. This cannot be a force of the failed.
One solution has been to substitute civilian contractors for soldiers. This is not a bad solution for some jobs, and outsourcing of semi-military specialties -- such as logistical services -- is as old as the republic. It is usable as a force supplement, but not as the force itself. The job of a soldier is to voluntarily put himself in harm's way, submitting to the orders of his superiors. The job of the contractor is to turn a profit. We find nothing shameful in this, but the natures of the missions are not only different, they are in a certain sense, at odds. Being a warrior and being a contractor are simply different things.
Nevertheless, this is the United States and it is a commercial republic. It is one thing to risk your life. It is another to emerge impoverished from the experience. The soldier's job is to place himself between home and war's desolation. It is the homeland's job to reward a soldier for a job well done. It is the peculiarity and, to us, the charm of the United States that soldiers will indeed give their lives for their country out of patriotism -- but they expect their country to pay them for the risk.
There is an unpleasant tradition in our country of paying soldiers poorly. It is as if the United States intends to dare its troops to serve. There is another side to this -- a hidden contempt by businessmen and professionals toward those who would serve at that kind of pay. We know that the children of wealthy businessmen and professionals don't serve, but the deeper shame is the lack of respect the elite has for those people who do. Part of it goes back to the aristocratic tradition of the enlisted man as brute, but it also extends to officers -- there is a feeling that if these men and woman were any good, they would be selling bonds.
That is about to change with a vengeance. The United States will not institute a draft. The children of the elite will not enlist. The United States is going to lose its army in the coming year or so, or will face a revolt of the exploited in the ranks -- men and women trapped in commitments that are far more extensive than anyone expected, and whose lives are being thereby ruined. But there is a war on and it is not going to go away.
The United States will have to replace some of the existing force, will have to compensate the remainder for staying on and will have to induce others to join. These will be men and women prepared to sacrifice their lives if need be, but not their financial futures. Nor is it fair to expect them to do so. They will be fighting not only so that others might live -- but also so that others can make a pile of money while they serve.
No one wants a draftee on his flank, but those who will not serve must surely pay and pay big time. The idea that a captain leading a company in Iraq should make less than a successful professional in any other field is absurd. The idea that a senior IT technician at a brokerage or hospital should have a 401(k) while a sergeant working computers in Baghdad has to put in 20 years before he sees a nickel in retirement income, is obscene.
And, leaving moralism aside, it will not work. There is no way around an expanded force and there is, therefore, no way around vastly increased pay and benefits for the troops. This will mean either higher taxes or cutbacks in other areas. However, those who don't serve and don't send their children to serve are no longer going to be able to simply count on being protected by the faceless "others." There ain't no such thing as a free lunch -- and that goes for national defense, as well.
Something healthy will come out of this. For a country that fights as many wars as the United States does -- and it fights a lot of wars -- the idea that the profession of arms should be treated worse and paid any less than professions like the law or medicine is absurd. Soldiers do not deal with matters of less importance to Americans than lawyers and doctors. In the past, it was possible to get soldiers on the cheap. Those days are past. If the United States plans to have a military in two years, it will have to pay for it.
(c) 2004 Strategic Forecasting, Inc. All rights reserved.
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