Forceful Engagement: Rethinking the Role
of Military Power in US Global Policy
Project on Defense Alternatives
objective of the new administration will be to “rebalance” America’s foreign
and security policy “tool kit”, giving greater prominence to diplomacy and
other elements of “soft power”. And it is easy to see why. The surge in US defense
spending and military activity that began ten years ago, and then sharply
accelerated after the 11 September 2001 attacks, has had disconcerting
results—to say the least. But setting an effective alternative course for US policy will
not be as easy to accomplish as some assume.
defense spending has risen by 90 percent in real terms, bringing the national
defense budget close to $700 billion annually, which represents about 46
percent of global defense expenditure (in purchasing power terms). All told,
there are approximately 440,000 US
military personnel presently overseas, which is close to the number that was
overseas during the last decade of the Cold War. About 200,000 are currently
engaged in combat operations and more than 38,000 have been wounded in action
or killed since 2001. Despite this prodigious and costly effort, the world today
seems, on balance, to be less secure, stable, and friendly than eight years
ago. Terrorist activity and anti-Americanism have increased. The nation’s
military activity has unsettled its alliances and prompted balancing behavior
on the part of potential big power competitors: China
And there remains no real end in sight for America’s
consumptive commitments in Afghanistan
Indeed, the scope of US
military intervention is expanding.
operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown the world is that the United
States, unimpeded by a peer competitor, cannot by its current methods reliably
stabilize two impoverished nations comprising only one percent of the world’s
population—despite the investment of nearly 5,000 American lives and more than
$850 billion. What General David Petreaus once asked of the Iraq war—“Tell
me how this ends”—might be asked of the “war on terror” as a whole. The effort
waxes and wanes, meandering into every corner of the earth, but shows no sure
progress toward an end that might be called “victory.”
wisdom is needed to suspect that a sea-change in method is due.
greater play to diplomacy and “soft power” is advisable, but not sufficient.
More fundamental is the need to roll back America’s over-reliance on military
instruments, which has proved both improvident and counter-productive. That the
faces serious security challenges is not at question. Nor at question is the
need for energetic global engagement. The problem is that the United States
is using its armed forces and military power well beyond the limit of their
utility. It is now experiencing not just diminishing returns, but negative
ones. Thus, America
finds itself paying more and more for less and less security.
moderation is also essential to the revival of America’s world reputation and
leadership position. This, because what most divides the United States from
those it proposes to lead is the issue of when, how, and how much to use force
and the armed forces. This divide helped drive the Bush administration deeper
into unilateralism. It was apparent during the 1990s as well, when the rise in
anti- American sentiments first made headlines. Indeed, most post-Cold War US
military interventions have involved considerable contention with key allies.
Even when they join the United
States on the battlefield, differences over
the use of force re-emerge at the tactical level and with regard to “rules of
the role of force and the armed forces in US policy will not come easily. The
current balance is well-rooted ideologically, institutionally, and politically.
Some US leaders see it as
reflecting America’s unique
competitive advantage in the post-Cold War world and as pivotal to America’s
strategy for shaping the process of globalization. But the costly wreck that is
recent policy constitutes a strong argument for a change.
advent of a new administration in Washington
provides an opportunity to go “back to the drawing board”. Unlike the first
post-Cold War administrations, the next one will have the benefit of
hindsight—having seen clearly both the nature of today’s security challenges
and the downside of adopting an overly-militarized approach to addressing them.
path out of the current policy cull-de-sac begins with the question, How did we get here?
The advent of primacy
The end of
the East-West Cold War, beginning with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, put
the United States
at a strategic crossroads that remains relevant today. America entered the new era with a margin of
military predominance greater than that enjoyed by any power since Rome in the Augustan age.
Suggestive of the change, the US
share of world military spending rose from 28 percent in 1986 to 34 percent in
1994. (Today it stands at approximately 46 percent, as noted above.)
relevant was the altered balance of power between the United States
and potential adversary states. Again, defense expenditure can serve as a proxy
measure. In 1986, America’s
China, and their
allies—taken together spent 50 percent more on defense than did the United States.
By 1994, this same group was spending 42 percent less than the United States.
Although US defense spending actually declined during this period, aggregate
spending by the adversary group fell faster and much further. The change
affected not only the balance in standing military forces, but also in command
of the arms trade and in capacities for military assistance, global military
presence, and military research and development.
Notably, America’s margin of superiority has grown larger
since the mid-1990s, despite increased spending by Russia
Today, US defense expenditures— not including war costs—are more than twice as
great as those of Russia and China combined (in terms of purchasing power).
The end of
the Cold War also prompted strategic realignments favoring the United States.
As the Soviet bloc disintegrated, former Soviet satellites turned toward the
West and then, in 1992, the Soviet Union
itself dissolved into 15 separate countries. Former Soviet clients in Asia, the
Middle East, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere
found themselves substantially shorn of material support. Equally important,
the contest of ideologies and social systems that had helped animate the Cold
War ended. Both Russia and China
adopted the posture of ordinary, self-interested great powers.
circumstances presented a historic opportunity to increase global cooperation,
advance the demilitarization of international affairs, and claim a permanent
peace dividend. The end of the Cold War also brought to the fore a host of
transnational problems—terrorism among them—that could be effectively addressed
only through broad cooperation.
promise that was born when the Wall came down proved from the start to be more
difficult than many had hoped. One problem was that Russia,
China, and other second-tier
powers—including core US
allies—were unwilling to simply accept American global leadership. On the
American side, leaders were unwilling to accept the costs and risks of building
out and relying on global institutions and cooperative regimes. The
“transaction costs” of deeper cooperation—including implied limits on America’s
freedom of action—seemed too high to too many. And, of course, the United States
was at odds with much of the world over the prospective role of military power.
principle Many nations, including America’s
partners, have tended to depreciate the utility of American military
predominance. This, because the circumstance that produced it— the Soviet
collapse—also seemed to make it less relevant. The US strategic community, by
contrast, has been mesmerized by primacy. As Richard Haass, the current
president of the Council on Foreign Relations, put it:
“The fundamental question that confronts American foreign policy is what to do
with a surplus of power and the many and considerable advantages this surplus
confers.” To many, America’s new, sole-superpower status seemed to provide the
leverage with which it might further enhance its security, extend its position
of world leadership, and advance an American vision of world order—a “new rule
set”. Implicit in these aspirations was a reorientation of the military from a
reactive “defense and deterrence” stance to a more proactive one.
exercise of primacy does not necessarily entail military activism, of course.
The United States
also possesses abundant “soft power.” But, as “soft power” advocate Joseph Nye
(and others) have observed: it is only in the military
dimension that the world can be thought to be unipolar. Moreover: military
power is the policy instrument that the United States has in greatest
supply. The US
national defense budget is 15 times as large as the budget for international
affairs. And Defense commands 200 times as many people as State.
military primacy had been codified as the foundation of US post-Cold
War security policy. The Quadrennial Defense Review and National Security
Strategy documents of that year together asserted that US world leadership was
essential to the nation’s security and that leadership, in turn, depended on
maintaining America’s distinct global military predominance. Thus, primacy
became a security end in its own right and the cornerstone of US global
policy. In 2000, Defense Secretary William Cohen publically declared the
post-Cold War peace dividend to be over. (How much had America saved?
Measured in 2008 dollars, the United
States spent $760 billion less on defense
during 1991-2000 than it had during the last decade of the Cold War.)
paraphrase former UK Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher: many US
leaders treated US
military primacy as though it were the peace dividend. A persisting problem,
however, is that military primacy does not translate automatically into
strategic gains. It conveys a unique competitive advantage only if national
leaders can put it to effective use. Otherwise, much of America’s
post-Cold War military would amount to nothing more than costly surplus. Former
Secretary of State Madeline Albright succinctly captured the problem in a 1993
conversation about the Balkans conflict with then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs,
General Colin Powell. Powell had said the options for effective military action
in the Balkans conflict were limited. Albright reportedly shot back, “What’s
the point of having this superb military, if we can’t use it?”
Putting primacy to work
the 1990s, the US national
security establishment set to work refiguring how America might effectively put
military primacy to work. In doing so, they developed a set of practices and
perspectives that continue to frame security policy today. Surveying US policy
developments during the post-Cold War period:
■ Three successive US
administrations have lowered the threshold on using force, undertaking nine
significant wars and forceful military interventions in 14 years. (By comparison, the United States undertook only six, small or
modest-size combat operations during the period 1975-1989.)
■ The ways in which national
leadership imagine using force and our armed forces have multiplied, and
objectives in war have grown steadily more ambitious. These now include the aim
of fighting multiple overlapping wars, achieving fast decisive results,
overturning regimes, and sustaining protracted large-scale occupations.
traditional objectives of deterring and defending against aggression, there has
been an increasing emphasis on trying to use force and forceful pressure to
actually “prevent the emergence” of threats and, more generally, to stabilize
and “shape” the strategic environment (as the 1997 US Quadrennial Defense
Review put it.)
past, threat prevention and “environment shaping” were largely in the purview
of the State Department. But a feature of our post-Cold War practice has been
the increasing intrusion of the Department of Defense (DOD) on the provinces of
State. Parallel to this, diplomatic functions have been increasingly militarized.
Thus, today coercive diplomacy plays a bigger role relative to traditional
“quid pro quo” diplomacy. Similarly, “offensive counter-proliferation”—that is,
arms control by means of bombardment or even regime change—has grown in
even exerted more influence over US programs in support of democratization and
development— and this influence is growing. The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review
strongly advocated for greater Pentagon authority in managing US security
partnerships and conducting development assistance programs. Already the
Pentagon oversees 22 percent of US official development funds—up from 3.5
percent in 1998.
The use of force—a last resort?
of the 20th century’s great conflicts was the emergence of a general societal
presumption against war: the simple idea that war should be an instrument of
last and infrequent resort, mostly restricted to defense against aggression.
The reasons are both moral and pragmatic, having to do with the inherent
unpredictability of war and its human cost. The “last resort” principle
embodies an implicit recognition that war constitutes a zone of profound and
chaotic effects. Thus, it holds, we mostly should not go to war unless it is
forced upon us.
resort” principle has been in retreat in US policy since the end of the
East-West conflict. President George H.W. Bush first enunciated the shift in a
1993 address at West Point. Therein, he set
aside the common “last resort” principle for a more permissive formulation.
Rather than last, force might be the preferred option when other approaches
were not thought to be as likely to work or to work as well. It is precisely
this type of complacent utilitarianism that the last resort principle takes to
be inappropriate, given the chaotic and extreme nature of war.
“war threshold” reflects a number of considerations: For what purposes should a
nation resort to military force and threats? What are the diplomatic
prerequisites to using force? How soon in a developing clash of interests
should force be brought into play? The threshold also pertains to the level of
civilian casualties, collateral damage, and general mayhem that a nation is
willing to risk.
the threshold on force can mean that the relationship between going to war and
national self-defense becomes more attenuated. It can mean that the limits on
“pre-emptive” uses of force become looser— or that forceful coercion becomes
diplomacy’s routine companion. It can mean that the “rules of engagement”
within war become more permissive or that firepower comes to play a greater
role in stability operations. It can mean a greater willingness to “go it
alone” in prosecuting a war or undertaking it with just a small circle of
friends in coalition. In sum: all those considerations that normally act to
limit the frequency, extent, and intensity of war become less compelling.
the advent of clear US
military predominance has figured in the willingness to lower the threshold on
using force. Additionally, the dissolution of the Soviet sphere greatly reduced
the likelihood that small wars would escalate to large. Especially important is
the fact that regional conflicts no longer carry a substantial risk of
escalation to global nuclear war.
At the same
time that official thinking about the use of force was changing, defense
planners (especially at Rand Corporation) began exploring new ways of
calibrating threats and managing the security environment. These ideas became
important enablers of increased military activism.
General Colin Powell, who was then Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs, had
observed that the Pentagon was “running out of demons.” But as the scale of
“clear and present” dangers receded, the Pentagon refocused defense preparation
and action on unknown and prospective threats. Emphasizing “uncertainty,”
planners relaxed their assumptions about America’s future interests and
about the identity of potential foes, their capabilities, and their objectives.
Planners lowered the bar on the plausibility of threat scenarios, brought
”worst case” possibilities to the fore, and boosted their estimates of what
these might require of our armed forces.
as the scale and stakes of security challenges declined, the Pentagon adopted
more ambitious military objectives, seeking to deploy force ever faster and win
wars more quickly and in more than one theater simultaneously. One aim was to
be prepared to deal quickly and decisively with a very broad range of possible
“surprises”. None of these were remotely
as serious or immediate as the challenge that had once been posed by the Soviet
bloc. And almost none involved attacks on the US homeland. But
hedging against the whole set of them worldwide substantially boosted putative
rather than immunizing the United States against unpleasant surprises, the
effort to defeat uncertainty only dissipated America’s resources and attention.
Thus, when Al Qaeda terrorists attacked the United
States in 2001, America’s intelligence agencies and
armed forces were mostly preoccupied with other concerns. Bioterrorism, missile
defense, North Korea,
and Chinese military power dominated security discourse in the months before 11
September. This effectively distracted from eight years of strategic
warning—beginning with the 1993 World Trade Center attack—and eight months of
more immediate warnings regarding Al Qaeda’s interest in attacking the US
homeland. A few years later, the armed forces were similarly unprepared for the
eventuality of protracted counter-insurgency campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.
recent failures point to a simple truth: Attempts to hedge against uncertainty
by preparing in all directions for all scenarios will leave a nation’s defenses
less sensitive to and prepared for what is actually emerging. In fact, the
emphasis on “uncertainty” during the past decade has allowed each military
service and branch to find some justification for continuing to do and buy what
it has been doing and buying for years. Thus, despite years of talk about
“transformation”, the US
military entered the new century looking not much different than it did in
1990, albeit smaller.
hubris that leads policy makers and planners to think that America can
decisively trump surprise and attain complete security. A better approach to
managing uncertainty is to invest more in intelligence, improve America’s
capacity to quickly adapt its defenses to new circumstances as they arise,
better protect those national assets that are most critical, and ensure that
the nation has the fundamental strength to absorb unexpected blows and “bounce
back”—as it did after Pearl Harbor.
Prevention or provocation?
post-Cold War focus on potential worst case scenarios also increased the
attraction of “jumping the gun”— that is, taking action early. “Acting early”
can refer to several stratagems—preemption, prevention, or preclusion— each
more risk-averse than the one preceding. Preemption involves taking action to
spoil an attack that is in its preparatory stages. Prevention, by contrast,
involves acting forcefully now against an adversary who officials believe will
attempt a serious, unavoidable aggression at some point in future years.
Preclusion goes a step further, seeking to remove the possibility of a future
aggression even when this eventuality does not seem certain or undeterrable
appreciate the difference among these stratagems, it helps to dissect the
notion of “threat”. A “real and present” threat of aggression minimally comprises
a serious clash of interests and the intention, capability, and opportunity to
do harm. When some of these elements are missing, there is still risk, but not
an immediate threat of the type once posed by the Soviet
Union. Even when all the constituent elements of “threat” converge
to form a real and present danger, deterrence can often hold it in check—as it
did during the Cold War— while diplomacy and other instruments work to defuse
it. But it is the risks inherent in this path that the United States
is today less willing to bear—despite (or perhaps because of) its distinct
and preclusive military operations imply treating adversaries (or potential
adversaries) who do not pose an imminent threat of attack as though they do.
Such actions target not aggression, per se, nor even the imminent danger of
aggression but, instead, the capability to aggress—be
it existing, emergent, or suspected. Prevention and preclusion also can target
actors who security officials believe are predisposed, due to the nature of
their governments or belief systems, to do America significant harm at some
point in the future, although they presently lack the capability. Successive US
administrations have marked such recalcitrant state actors as “rogue states” or
“axis of evil” states—designations that tend to invite efforts at regime
change. Similarly, the failure of some nations and social movements to
integrate with the sphere of market democracy is seen as posing a military
security problem of growing significance.
second Bush administration clearly crossed a threshold in attacking Iraq, the notion of applying US military
power more proactively than during the Cold War was already well-established
before George W. Bush took office. Key precursors and enablers of current
policy ideas—such as offensive counter-proliferation, the “rogue state
doctrine”, and regime change—were already evident in US
policy toward Iraq
and elsewhere during the late 1990s. Some of these ideas may survive the Bush
administration—although in transmuted form as part of the new enthusiasm for
prevention work? Our recent experience shows that treating potential threats as
though they are imminent ones can exacerbate tensions and precipitate the
outcome that “prevention” is meant to preclude. Thus, in addressing the nuclear
programs of both North Korea
and Iran, America’s
coercive efforts spurred, rather than retarded, undesirable behavior. In the Iraq case, too,
a confrontational approach in the run-up to the 2003 war fed the regime’s
“bunker-mentality”, making war more likely, not less. Generally, the
declaration of “regime change” objectives and the frequent resort to
saber-rattling undermine diplomacy and help to precipitate and harden
anti-American attitudes and coalitions.
The Iraq case also
suggests that preventive uses of military force rest on unrealistic assumptions
about our capacity to control outcomes and a serious underestimation of the
potential costs and consequences of going to war. Additionally, the operations
in Iraq and Afghanistan
illustrate the limits of military occupation as a means of advancing stability
and democracy. In both cases, the dominant role of armed foreigners (and their
too frequent resort to firepower) have fed and sustained rejectionist movements
Using military power to
shape the world
costly peacetime function of the US military in the post-Cold War
era is something the 1997 US Defense Review called “environment shaping”. This
worldwide military presence, its alliances and military-to-military contacts,
and its arms transfers and military assistance programs. A putative goal of
this activity is to nudge nations that are at a “strategic crossroads” to
develop in a preferred direction. So, this too is a form of preventive action.
First among those nations that Washington sees
at a crossroads are China, Russia, India,
is supposed to occur by means of “armed dissuasion”—a process that involves
using military assets and activity to “stake out” or strongly assert US
interests in a specific situation or outcome. We might think of this as
“preemptive deterrence” or “preemptive containment.” The spread of US military
bases and partnerships toward the borders of Russia
and the increased US naval
presence in Asia are supposed to serve a
dissuasive function. They are supposed to communicate implicitly that an
undesirable competition or confrontation may ensue if Russia or China undertakes a proscribed
course of action.
Another key objective of dissuasion has been
to discourage other countries from initiating arms competitions with the United States
and, in this way, preserve American military primacy. How? By creating and
maintaining “substantial margins of advantage across key functional areas of
military competition”—as Secretary Cheney put it in his 2002 report to
Congress. The conceit is to preempt arms races by winning them in advance and,
thus, make competition seem hopeless. And so, US military modernization efforts
proceed full-bore, despite the absence of anything resembling peer competition.
military modernization to the dissuasion of military competition also alters
the status of arms control in US
policy. The only negotiated agreements that are congruent with the drive for
dissuasive power are those that codify or otherwise preserve a distinct US superiority.
Does armed dissuasion work?
One test of
the increased emphasis on militarized environment shaping is relations with Russia and China. Unfortunately, both nations
seem less willing today, not more, to accept a “rule set” written in Washington, or to integrate within a global order led by
the United States.
Both also have responded energetically to the advance of US bases, alliances,
missile defense, and military modernization. We cannot assume that US efforts
at “preemptive containment” and “preemptive deterrence” are the principal
drivers of this behavior, but it is worth re-considering how these practices
might be counter-productive.
armed dissuasion is provocative or not depends on what behaviors it targets and
what rules it seeks to set. Generally speaking: if dissuasive acts impinge on
the internal affairs, sovereignty, core interests, or normal prerogatives of a
target country, they are more likely to prompt resistance than compliance. The United States might effectively dissuade Chinese
naval activism in the Caribbean, for instance—but not in the South
China Sea. Likewise, if the United
States seems to be claiming extraordinary rights or
privileges through dissuasive acts, the targeted nations will either resist
complying or strive to alter the power balance between themselves and America. This
seems to be precisely what China
and Russia are attempting to
do as the US
network of bases and partnerships gradually surrounds them.
states can respond to shaping efforts by seeking shelter under the strategic
umbrella of larger ones. In this way, efforts at militarized “environment
shaping” may be adding impetus to a process of global repolarization and
remilitarization. This process is apparent in the formation and expansion of
the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which includes as full members China, Russia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,
The SCO has afforded observer status to India,
Iran, Mongolia, and Pakistan. Among its policy
priorities are limitations on US efforts to secure new, enduring military bases
in Central Asia.
Is primacy worth the
than a dozen years, US
policy has been ruled by the “primacy principle”. This is the notion that America’s
present condition of distinct military primacy is essential to the nation’s
security—not just a fortuitous thing, but a necessary one. What recent practice
shows, however, is that US leaders have dangerously overestimated the utility
preponderance of military power. At fabulous expense, the efforts to extend
primacy and put it to work have been overwhelmed by unwanted and inadvertent
primacy is not sustainable, at any rate. Indeed, the more it is exercised, the
more it invites balancing behavior on the part of others. In this light, it is
important to note that present global disparities in military power do not
reflect the global distribution of human and material resources. Today, the United States
devotes 70 percent more of its GDP to defense than do other nations, on
average. This gap is much higher than the one prevailing in 1985. This means
that other nations—China and
Russia, among them—have
considerable latent capacity to narrow the military gap between themselves and
the United States,
if they so choose. Something worth contemplating is that none, not even China, are
doing all they might to close the military gap—not yet, at least. Why not?
the “primacy principle” and in the expanded use of America’s
armed forces is a wager about the nature of strategic competition today, and
about the balance among the strategic challenges that face America and all
nations. Most nations—including major US allies and potential
competitors—are betting that the military sphere is not the key one. Potential
competitors and adversaries, especially, are wagering that America has
over-invested itself in the wrong contest, the wrong sphere. The current
economic upheaval, which has done more to damage American power than Bin-Laden
could ever hope, suggests that they are correct.
A litmus for progress
new course in policy begins with acknowledging that the diffuse surge in US military
activism that followed the 9/11 attacks has been, on balance,
counter-productive. Looking to the future, national leadership must be more
realistic about what can be reliably accomplished by military means. The most
important relationship to keep in mind is not the balance between US power and that of its adversaries, but the
balance between US
power and US objectives.
leaders also need to be more cognizant of the costs and chaos that attend war.
Among these is the risk of unnecessarily adding impetus to global
remilitarization and re-polarization. A new cost-benefit calculus must be
brought to bear in US military strategy.
the paradox of “less security at greater cost”, America’s
leaders must rethink the US
security policy “problem set” and alter the balance among policy tools. An
adequate alternative would emphasize broad multilateral cooperation in
containing and resolving regional crises, reducing conflict potentials, and
redressing the sources of instability in the international system. And, it
would recognize that the sources of instability today are not principally
military, political, or ideological in character, but instead economic,
demographic, and environmental.
The United States
should redouble its effort to promote the spread of human rights and democracy.
And it should energetically support sustainable development. But these efforts
should be demilitarized. And care should be taken to ensure that they do not
become or seem to become part of a strategic competition between states or
groups of states.
measure of a renewed US
diplomacy will be efforts to reach across current strategic divides—especially
to Russia, China, and the
Muslim world—and find common ground. Cooperation on water, food, energy, and health
security, global warming, economic development, and the management of
globalization could serve as a foundation for cooperation on more divisive
issues. Regarding these divisive issues, a re-emphasis on traditional “quid pro
quo” diplomacy will pay higher dividends than will the resort to coercive
diplomacy and saber rattling.
armed forces should focus more narrowly on containing, deterring, and defending
against actual threats of violence to critical national interests. Efforts at
“environment shaping” and “threat prevention”, which currently preoccupy much
of the US
military, are most appropriately the job of the State Department.
stability operations are important and will remain so—but they should be
undertaken only as multilateral affairs under the auspices of inclusive
international institutions. To be successful, they must be based on strong
global, regional, and local consensus. They are not wars and should not be
prosecuted as such. Generally speaking, the rules of engagement in such
efforts—and in counter-insurgency campaigns as well—should become more
restrictive, not less.
The struggle for meaningful
first two years of the Obama administration, all of America’s defense guidance will be
reviewed and, to an unknown extent, rewritten. The impediments to adequate
policy change are substantial. Several factors predispose the American polity
to a dependence on military power and on its exercise
in international affairs.
popular domestic assent to US
global activism characteristically has depended on such activism being framed
as a “security issue”—a matter of “defending forward”. This maps a path to
globalism that accords with deep-seated “American exceptionalist” and
“isolationist” sentiments. So does a preference for emphasizing “decisive”
(that is, military) means—because these seem to promise a quick, clear, and
surgical form of engagement. Thus, past surges in US global activism have been
war-driven—in 1917, 1941, and 1950—with peacetime engagement thereafter almost
continuously framed in terms of “Cold War”. Today, the “war on terror” defines
a politically practicable path for global activism. Unfortunately, as an
overall framework for foreign policy, it favors the wrong mix of instruments.
Still, it may be difficult to form a domestic consensus around an alternative
path—that is, a path that does not rely on a war frame (as former president
Bill Clinton learned during the 1990s).
impediment to change is that the institutional base of America’s
security policy discourse strongly favors a militarized view—that is, the
“Pentagon lens” predominates. The defense establishment enjoys an unmatched
capacity to broadly convey its assessment of the global security environment
and US security requirements. DOD and the services employ thousands of
personnel to communicate their perspectives to various constituencies. And they
heavily court retired officers and government officials who routinely serve the
news media as “independent analysts”. Finally, DOD and the services sustain a
network of policy centers and contracted think tanks whose aggregate size
rivals those in the public sphere. (Expenditures for DOD’s “studies and
analysis centers” surpass $200 million annually, excluding research
laboratories. By contrast, the largest nongovernmental “think tank” devoted
principally to foreign and security affairs—the right-of-center Center for
Strategic and International Studies—had a 2005 budget of $28 million.)
bureaucracies, DOD and the services tend to see and represent the world in
terms of their own defining missions and functions. They are attuned to the
military aspect of foreign affairs and tend to view these in terms of military
conflict scenarios. There is nothing inherently wrong with this bias; it
conforms to the military’s role and it belongs in the mix. What is
dysfunctional, however, is the overall imbalance in America’s marketplace of ideas,
which gives the “Pentagon lens” predominance. This is a product of history and
inertia—the effluent of the Second World War and the Cold War. And, in recent
policy, it has had the effect of normalizing a view of the security environment
that privileges military action.
the armed services do not explicitly favor military activism. Indeed, the Joint
Chiefs often exert a restraining influence when political leadership is
considering war. Nonetheless, the net effect of the defense establishment’s
“policy shops” and “think tanks” is to prime the charge for forceful
DOD and the
services are also intent on defending their institutional prerogatives and
preserving (or expanding) their budget share. Again, like all bureaucracies,
they seek to grow—consuming more resources, appending new roles, and extending
the scope of their authority. This they perceive and portray as a national
security imperative. An important and potentially supportive constituency is
the more-than-12-million voters who live in households with at least one person
who is in the active or reserve military, employed by DOD, or employed by a
defense contractor. Many millions more live in cities and towns heavily
dependent on DOD activity. For good reason, American
politicians generally demure from “running against the Pentagon”.
So, can the
next administration steer clear of the present overemphasis on military power
and chart an alternative course for US policy? In light of the
impediments to change, progress will require unusual foresight and courage. The
least hazardous path politically would be a modest departure from Bush
administration military policy. But this would not be adequate to the quandary
in which America presently finds itself—as will become clearer, if it needs to
be, when the next administration lifts the veil on the status of our armed
forces and their efforts abroad. Economic troubles and fiscal pressure are also
likely to generate stronger support for a shift in priorities. Finally, any new
charm and diplomacy offensive attempted by the next administration will soon fall
flat if not mated to a significant change in US defense strategy. Now, less than
ever, can America’s allies
afford to join America
in desultory wars.
presidential campaigns tell us little about what comes next in this area of
policy. For different reasons, both Democrats and Republicans have handled
defense issues gingerly. So the prospect for meaningful reform depends on
November 4th marking not the conclusion of the US security policy debate, but its
Toward a Sustainable US Defense
Posture. PDA Briefing Memo
#42. 02 August 2007.
War & Consequences: Global
Terrorism has Increased Since 9/11 Attacks. PDA Briefing Memo
#38. 25 September 2006.
Losing Hearts and Minds: World
Public Opinion and post-9/11 US
Security Policy. PDA Briefing Memo #37. 14 September 2006.
Fighting on Borrowed Time: The
Effect on US Military Readiness of America’s post-9/11 Wars. PDA Briefing
Report #19. 11 September 2006.
Conetta. “Dissuading China
and Fighting the ‘Long War’.” World Policy Journal (Summer 2006).
QDR 2006: Do The Forces Match the
Missions? DOD Gives Little Reason to Believe. PDA Briefing Memo #36.
Conetta. Arms control in an age of
strategic and military revolution. Presentation at
“Thinking with Einstein” conference, Federation of German Scientists. Berlin, 14-16 October
2005. Vicious circle: The dynamics of popular discontent in Iraq. PDA Research Monograph #10. 18 May 2005.
With offices in Washington DC and Cambridge MA, the Project on Defense Alternatives develops and promotes defense policy innovation that reconciles the goals of effective defense against aggression, improved international cooperation and stability, and lower levels of military spending and armed force worldwide. Subscribe to the monthly PDA Updates Bulletin.