AMERICA THE VULNERABLE Our Military Problems And How To Fix Them EDITED BY JOHN F. LEHMAN AND HARVEY SICHERMAN FOREIGN POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE PHILADELPHIA Dedication On a sad note, Colonel Harry G. Summers Jr., U.S. Army (ret.), who penned the article dealing with operations, procurement, and the defense industrial base and sat as a panelist for our second conference, passed away on November 14, 1999. Colonel Summers, a veteran of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, was the recipient of two Legions of Merit, the Silver Star, three Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts, two Air Medals, and two awards of the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, and also authored numerous books, articles, and columns. He was, in short, the quintessential soldier- scholar. We dedicate this volume to his memory. TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface vii John H. Ball America the Vulnerable 1 John F. Lehman and Harvey Sicherman Roles and Missions 12 Donald Kagan Superpowers Don’t Do Windows 27 John Hillen The U.S. Presumption of Quick, Costless Wars 48 Andrew P. N. Erdmann Operations, Procurement, and Industrial Base 73 Harry G. Summers Jr. Civil-Military Relations 84 Eliot A. Cohen The U.S. Military Must Find Its Voice 96 Sam C. Sarkesian An Uninformed Debate on Military Culture 115 Don M. Snider Does Military Culture Matter? 134 Williamson Murray Must U.S. Military Culture Reform? 152 John Hillen The Case for National Missile Defense 171 Keith B. Payne v AMERICA THE VULNERABLE Rethinking Bio-Chemical Dangers 182 Henry Sokolski PREFACE Bad Medicine for Biological Terror 196 Andrew J. Bacevich Asymmetrical Adversaries 215 In 1996, the Foreign Policy Research Institute convened a Defense Winn Schwartau Task Force composed of distinguished scholars and practitioners The Risks of a Networked Military 225 to examine the increasingly important debates over U.S. military Richard J. Harknett and the JCISS Study Group capabilities in the post–Cold War era. Issues included the roles and missions of our forces, the defense industrial base, and civil- The Defense Task Force 245 military relations. We undertook a second conference in 1998 to explore the culture(s) and ethos of our armed services, and in the Biographical Notes on the Editors and Authors 246 fall of 1999 we held a final conference on weapons of mass destruction (i.e., nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons) and information warfare. This volume brings together in one place nine essays commissioned for the three major conferences, plus five related essays from the pages of Orbis, FPRI’s quarterly jour- nal of world affairs, and an introductory essay that lays out plainly five threats to America’s national security and what can be done about them. The views offered here do not reflect a consensus of the task force, for unanimity was not our goal. Rather, we sought—and received—the expert and carefully considered assessments of a diverse group of individuals. The result is a comprehensive and, we hope, invaluable tool for policymakers, analysts, and the interested public. We argue strongly that our military problems should be seen in the round, rather than approached piecemeal, with each problem considered to the exclusion of the others. The good news is that the United States does not yet face a military crisis. The bad news is that the deficiencies outlined in this report are rapidly eroding our capa- bilities. We should not wait until a crisis arises before we fix the problems. We have the skill and the resources—financial, indus- trial, and human—to deal with them now. There can be no excuse for not doing so. The work of this task force has been made possible by the gen- erous support of the Sarah Scaife Foundation, whose secretary, R. Daniel McMichael, continues his admirable preoccupation with American national security; our trustees Bobbie and Tatnall L. Hillman; and the Merion Fund of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Walter A. McDougall, Roger Donway, Shaynee Snider, and Stephen Winterstein lent their invaluable editing skills to the vi vii AMERICA THE VULNERABLE various contributions in this volume. Last, but not least, Harvey Sicherman and John Lehman did a masterful job running this AMERICA THE VULNERABLE project, ably assisted by the project coordinator Michael P. Noonan. by John F. Lehman and Harvey Sicherman John H. Ball Chairman, Board of Trustees A decade has passed since the end of the Cold War. The demise of Foreign Policy Research Institute the Soviet Union concluded the most vulnerable period in Philadelphia American history, a time when the possibility of nuclear attack threatened the very existence of the United States. No wonder then that Americans heaved a mighty sigh of relief, having sur- vived to watch the fall of their country’s most powerful enemy. Our new sense of security led to a predictable course of action. We disarmed. Starting with the first Bush administration and accelerating through both Clinton terms, the United States reduced its military forces by 40 percent. National defense expen- ditures in real terms (adjusted for inflation) dropped from $302.3 billion in 1992 to $274.8 billion in 2000.1 The portion of the U.S. gross national product devoted to defense shrank from 6.5 percent in 1985 to just over 3.0 percent, a level not seen since the 1930s. Arguably this defense “dividend” made a major contribution toward ending federal deficits. Our military, however, was not allowed to rest on its laurels. U.S. forces were engaged abroad with increasing frequency in countries such as Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, culmi- nating in the U.S.-led war with Yugoslavia over Kosovo in 1999. These operations strained falling budgets and smaller forces. Simultaneously, our defense planning was challenged by the so- called revolution in military affairs, which requires keeping U.S. defenses in the forefront of new technologies. Slowly—very slowly—America’s complacency about security has begun to wear off, replaced by growing unease at what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Henry Shelton, called “the fraying of the force.” Among the greatest concerns: • Problems posed by an all-volunteer force to the American tradition of a citizens’ army under civilian control. • The loss of qualified pilots, sailors, and soldiers in vital jobs throughout the services, and the unreadiness of various units. 1National defense expenditures are an amalgamation of defense-related spending programs ranging from the Defense Department’s budget to nuclear weapons pro- grams in the Energy Department. International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 1999/2000 (London: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 17. viii 1 AMERICA THE VULNERABLE America the Vulnerable • The debatable wisdom of humanitarian interventions and crisis may be regarded by some as an oxymoron, but there is no their legacy of open-ended commitments. substitute for acting now to forestall a crisis in our military capa- • An overly consolidated contractor base with hugely bilities. Unlike earlier times, we are not burdened by either a lack inflationary potential. of resources or strategic confusion. Only a fatal complacency will • New missile threats and the controversy over missile explain the absence of prudent measures. defenses. To overcome such complacency, our leaders must be willing to • The dangers of biological and chemical weapons. educate the public in order to mobilize support. Defense, after all, • The challenge of ensuring computer security in an era of is the first and most essential of public goods. We are convinced ubiquitous electronic communication and international hackers. that a defense plan that concentrates on the main threats is the Each of these issues has its own community of partisans who only effective way to proceed. We are also convinced that the will propose various actions to address it, and pressures on American people will support it. Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the White House may produce We turn now to the five most serious military problems and some progress. In our view, however, this piecemeal approach will what can be done about them. obscure a larger issue. While none of these problems is yet at a crisis stage, together they are steadily eroding the U.S. capability The Demilitarization of the Military to deter war across the spectrum or, should deterrence fail, to win At the heart of our strategy is the axiom that to keep the peace any conflict. we must be able to fight and win a war. Our military has as its Clearly, U.S. forces that are uncertain of their command and principal mission the defense of the United States and our inter- control, subject to operational disruption from computer hackers, ests abroad. Throughout the Cold War, this required the training and trained more for peacekeeping than warfighting are going to and deployment of large U.S. forces to other countries. They were lack the capabilities America needs and expects. A noncompeti- held in readiness to fight a war, and from Korea to Vietnam to the tive industrial base will be unable to produce weapons in either the Persian Gulf, they occasionally did so. numbers or quality needed, but its wares will be outrageously Surprisingly, despite the demise of our major adversary, U.S. expensive. And if the United States remains vulnerable to biologi- military forces have been deployed overseas at a frenetic pace cal or chemical threats, or to ballistic missiles, then our govern- higher than any in history: thirty-seven separate deployments ment’s freedom of action abroad and our safety at home will be between 1991 and 1999, or an average of one deployment every equally illusory. eleven weeks. Of these, only eleven (29.7 percent) used military But it is not too late to head off such a fate.