The end of the Cold War will require a review of United States National Security Policy and a concomitant change in our National Defense Strategy. This strategy will respond to the changes in the world's security environment, including the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, the evolution in U.S. security alliances such as NATO and NORAD, the increased and unique threat posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the widening of the spectrum of conflict which will challenge the peace and security of our nation and its allies.
The causes of conflict and the modes which threats to our security interests will take have multiplied with the end of the Cold War. The nuclear weapons of the Cold War remain and will remain for some considerable time, even though there is a growing appreciation as to the declining utility of these devices. For sure there will be continuing pressure throughout the world to eliminate the presence of nuclear weapons in conjunction with efforts to halt the production, stockpiling, and deployment of chemical and biological weapons. It is likely that START II will be followed by START III and IV, as nations who claim ownership of nuclear weapons realize ownership has a high cost and marginal payoff. However, progress will be slow due to the immense importance of achieving symmetry during nuclear disarmament and the cumbersome and exacting safeguards associated with the disarmament process. Therefore, for the foreseeable future the threat of nuclear war must be addressed even though it will be less likely than before. The spectrum of national security challenges will expand as the threat of nuclear annihilation subsides.
The decisive victory achieved by the coalition forces over Iraq during Desert Storm should give future aggressors of major regional conflict cause to pause. While this does not mean that the threat of conventional warfare has vanished, it does mean that the national leader intending to use major conflict to achieve political aims must carefully craft strategy that will avoid the opportunity for confrontation with a large coalition force lead by the United States. Such a strategy might include surprise attack; short intense military action; the threat or use of nuclear, biological and/or chemical weapons; advanced surveillance measures and precision munitions; and warfare carried out on a fragmented battlefield which includes attacks on the capitals of other nations by means of ballistic missiles or unconventional warfare forces. This will be warfare for which the United States is ill trained and ill equipped.
Other challenges to the world's security will take many forms to which the military forces of the United States can play a constructive role. These are commonly referred to as Operations Other Than War, even though they may include the use of force to achieve desired political goals. They include the increasingly familiar peacemaking, peacekeeping, show of force, and humanitarian relief efforts. Success in these operations may well require retraining, re-equipping, or reorganizing our military forces. Each mission should be evaluated with respect to what is required to accomplish its unique challenges. However, the basic doctrine, training, or equipage of the military forces should be based on what is required to fight the residual Cold War, as well as deal with the growing demands of a major regional conflict.
The political goals upon which our national security strategy should be crafted are fairly straightforward. First, we should seek to preserve and invigorate the role of leadership the United States has maintained since the end of World War II, or the end of the Cold War (you take your pick). Second, and not apart from the first goal, the United States must be sufficiently strong to prevent or deter use of effective military power against us. It is not inconceivable that our so-called superpower status could be defeated in battle by a crafty and well-prepared adversary. Witness what happened to the powerful victors of WW II in Vietnam. Third, U.S. military forces must be of sufficient size, configuration, and readiness to bring a major conventional conflict to a successful termination. It goes without saying that during this process we need to reduce nuclear weapons to numbers that do not threaten the virtual destruction of the world. Nuclear deterrence forces also must remain in place. Fourth and lastly, our military forces must be capable of responding to all the other tasks and functions for which the national command authority calls upon the military. This first of challenges should be used to define the military forces we field, how we train them, and the methods we use to employ them.
The strategic geographic depth the United States enjoys, bounded by two oceans on the east and west and non-threatening nations to the north and south, means that our nation is somewhat immune from attack, other than by means of infiltration such as a terrorist, or from the skies by means of long-range aircraft, and cruise or ballistic missiles. We will require some actions and defenses which address these threats, but the major portion of our national defense effort must be placed on building and sustaining offensive forces for combat in environments other than our own soil. This dictates that our projection forces must be capable of rapidly responding to an unforeseen crisis anywhere in the world, keeping in mind that quick, decisive surprise favors our potential enemies. Given that we have proven unable to predict the outbreak of conflict in the past, these forces must also be ready at all times to carry out combat operations in most any place. There will not be time to modernize their equipment or train reserve force units. They must be capable of projecting and sustaining their military power over long distances and operating in the environment of the enemy's choosing. Last but not least, when required, they must be capable of decisive combat, not by attrition of the enemy force in head-to-head combat as was our nature in past wars, but by Shock and Awe so that conflict resolution is achieved with a maximum of success at the minimum loss of life in the shortest time. These characteristics for our projection force cannot be achieved easily, as the processes that defined our Cold War doctrines, force structures, equipment, and ways of doing business are loath to change.
The Services' and joint requirements oversight processes that define the equipment provided our military forces place emphasis on force structure and the traditional roles for those forces. This inertia can freeze our land, sea, air, and space capabilities at current or near current levels, but may prove inadequate to carry out new strategies. There are few incentives for a Service or the Joint Staff to reward innovation or divestiture of roles or missions in order to change the character and mix of land, sea, air, and space forces and to prepare them to fight the battles we must envisage for the twenty-first century.
For example, the Services claim lessons learned from Desert Storm which reinforce late twentieth century ways of fighting and ignore the troublesome aspects which loom in the future and threaten our traditional view of the battlefield. Many acclaim the role of precision weapons for our forces, but ignore the threat they pose if they are in the hands of the enemy. What would be the lessons learned if several hundred canisters of live Sensor Fused Weapons were released by a red force ballistic missile on the 24th Division during a Fort Irwin engagement? Certainly there would be profound changes in tactics, doctrine, and equipment indicated for the surviving U.S. Army force. What if radar homing Surface to Air Missiles were employed by the red force during a Red Flag exercise in the Nevada desert, not using centralized Soviet tactics/doctrine, but instead using decentralized yet cooperative engagement operations as would be used by our best and brightest if unleashed from their stagnant doctrines? I doubt that the Air Force would be spending millions of dollars trying to build electronic countermeasures to hide the large number of expensive and very non-stealthy aircraft they continue to build, such as the F-15E.
Imagine the shock on our populace if a single cruise missile were actually allowed to score a direct hit on the Carl Vinson aircraft carrier during a Solid Shield joint exercise with the attendant loss of life numbering in the 4,000 to 5,000 range. You would think the maritime force would reexamine the method it provides air power from the sea, vital yet today too vulnerable.
How many times do we hear that the space forces are configured to provide intelligence from overhead only to find in Iraq or Bosnia that the front line forces receive products that are old, inaccurate and altered to keep our Soviet foes from gaining knowledge of our capabilities? Perhaps we if we would dual hat the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency to the position of J-2, or even Commander-in-Chief of a regional unified command, there would be vast improvements in the tasking, evaluation, and delivery of space-derived intelligence to regional combat forces. Then we might see full understanding of the increasing role of space forces and implement change to make them more relevant to our national security strategies of the next century. Innovation, not size, must be sought because we do not have the resources to do both. Moreover, large forces drive our operational level strategy to force-on-force engagements in the attrition warfare model of the last century with its attendant causalities and destruction of equipment. George Patton's dictum still stands that directed his troops not to die for their country, but to get the other SOB to die for his.