Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

Col. Chet Richards • 45trasted with “peacemaking”) might be an important component of sizing forces forsmaller members of these organizations, it typically only requires a small fraction ofU.S. military capability, on the order of a brigade (5,000 troops).There is also a large question about whether this is really a mission for militaryforces at all. Stability operations and peacekeeping do not require much of the traditionalmilitary skills of defeating capable opponents in combat. Instead, they requiredifferent competencies, more akin to law enforcement or engineering. History suggeststhat militaries that engage in these activities lose the ability to be effective combatforces. 52 Israel was given a rude reminder of this in the 2006 war with the nonstategroup Hezbollah.So while the goals of stability and peacekeeping are undoubtedly worthy, it is notat all clear that military forces as traditionally defined should be performing them.The missions that do apply – logistics, communications, intelligence, etc. – are supportroles and will have little impact on force structure.ConclusionsThe next administration will have the opportunity to find a new strategic formula forAmerica’s national security. This new formula needs to be a better fit for the Americanpeople than our current mobilization-based military designed to re-fight WorldWar II. The new formula should also reconsider our political ideology of exportingdemocracy through long-term military occupations and should not assume that wehave found a formula for occupations.It is debatable whether, given its costs and the uncertain nature of its outcomes,war should ever have been considered a tool of policy. In the early 21st century, thepresence of nuclear weapons at the high end of the military operations spectrum combinedwith the demonstrated inability of Western military forces to achieve desiredoutcomes in Third World countries suggests that there is no longer room for debate.Framed this way, the question of national security policy for the 21st century becomes:In a world where virtually all of the threats to a nation’s well-being are self-inflicted –economic performance, distribution of wealth, pollution, infrastructure, immigration,education, health care, discrimination against ethnic minorities, etc. – where shouldmilitary force fall in the priority list of things to spend money on?For the new administration, the cardinal rule should be: Military forces should befunded only for missions that only the military can do. To use them for other purposes risksdiluting their unique capabilities, and they probably won’t be very good at them.The new administration should review the roles and sizes of our military forces underthis conclusion. Here are several elements that might go into their recommendations:1.Keep our nuclear deterrence credible against any conceivable combination ofopponents. Deterrence depends not only upon the number of warheads but on