Editor's Foreword

Chapter One
North America
THE UNITED STATES
Although incoming US President Barack Obama
took office in January 2009, within weeks of his election
victory in November 2008 he had indicated that
Dr Robert Gates would continue to serve as defence
secretary. Soon after the inauguration, Obama acceded
to the recommendations of Gates, General David
Petraeus and other key officials in revising the Iraq
plan that had been central to his presidential campaign.
Rather than remove all US combat forces within 16
months of the inauguration, Obama decided to take
19 months, to proceed slowly in drawing down troops
throughout 2009, and to plan to retain the equivalent
of five combat brigades in Iraq after the drawdown
was complete. (Those brigades, called Advisory and
Assistance Brigades, are modified versions of traditional
combat formations with trainers and advisers,
though retaining significant combat capability.)
Afghanistan has been a focus of some of the key
defence debates in the new administration. On 27
March, the president unveiled a strategy that required
roughly a doubling of US combat forces, agreeing with
Pentagon recommendations to replace General David
McKiernan (the original architect of the plan to bolster
US forces as part of a transition to a more traditional
counter-insurgency approach) with General Stanley
McChrystal. McChrystal’s ‘Initial Assessment’ on
assuming command of the International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF), made public in September
2009, served to sharpen the debate, with its stress on
the need for additional resources (see Afghanistan,
p. 343). In April, and continuing the attention on
procurements noted in The Military Balance 2009,
Gates announced several major changes in Pentagon
policy. These included cuts or cancellations of some
major weapons platforms such as the Army’s Future
Combat System (FCS), the F-22 aircraft, and several
missile-defence systems, and at least modest increases
in other programmes, notably the F-35 Joint Strike
Fighter.
Doctrine and policy
The context for current decision-making has in some
ways been set by Gates’s actions since assuming office
in December 2006. As of November 2009 the National
Defense Strategy of August 2008 remained the most
recent major US document on defence doctrine. Even
when the next Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR)
is completed and submitted (possibly in conjunction
with the release of the 2011 budget request to
Congress in February 2010), Gates’s 2008 strategy
will continue to have a powerful legacy. The National
Defense Strategy emphasised the centrality of the
counter-terrorist campaign, saying that ‘for the foreseeable
future, winning the Long War against violent
extremist movements will be the central objective of
the U.S.’. While some analysts reported that the document
may have met resistance in some quarters of the
military (with willingness to support large standing
forces, and the purchase of systems such as mineresistant
ambush-protected vehicles (MRAPs) over
longer, more-established programmes perhaps being
less than wholehearted), Gates pushed back against
such ideas. Nonetheless, when Gates delivered his
statement on the defence budget in May 2009, after
Obama’s five-year budget plan for the military
suggested capping future Pentagon budget growth at
roughly the rate of inflation, there was minimal criticism
from the uniformed services. This was a reflection
of Gates’s credibility, the fact that these proposals
had already been aired in his April budget recommendation
statement, the firm White House support
that he clearly enjoyed and perhaps also his willingness
to deal strongly with those deemed unsuccessful
in post (see The Military Balance 2009, p. 13).
Gates’s initial plan, prior to the QDR, to cut back on a
number of weapons systems included many specifics.
He proposed to halt further production of airborne
laser aircraft, a key element of American missiledefence
architecture. He would end procurement of
the C-17 transport plane. He would end procurement
of the DDG-1000 destroyer with the third vessel. He
would defer development of a new bomber, while
cancelling the so-called Transformational Satellite
Communications programme as well the VH-71 presidential
helicopter. Gates had already cancelled the
FCS ground-vehicle programme.
But under his proposals Gates is not aiming to slash
the defence budget, curtail modernisation or under-
North America