BOUNDING THE GWOT carlisle.army.mil
[ This is the concluding section of Record's paper, and I thing it's worth posting here. I'd post the whole thing for the pdf-impaired, but it's pretty long. ]
The central conclusion of this study is that the global war on
terrorism as currently defined and waged is dangerously indiscriminate
and ambitious, and accordingly that its parameters should be readjusted
to conform to concrete U.S. security interests and the limits of American
power. Such a readjustment requires movement from unrealistic to
realistic war aims and from unnecessarily provocative to traditional
uses of military force. Specifically, a realistically bounded GWOT
requires the following measures:
(1) Deconflate the threat. This means, in both thought and policy,
treating rogue states separately from terrorist organizations, and
separating terrorist organizations at war with the United States
from those that are not. Approaching rogue states and terrorist
organizations as an undifferentiated threat ignores critical differences
in character, threat level, and vulnerability to U.S. military action. Al-
Qaeda is an undeterrable transnational organization in a war with the
United States that has claimed the lives of thousands of Americans.
North Korea is a (so far) deterrable (and destroyable) state that is not
in a hot war with the United States. Similarly, lumping together all
terrorist organizations into a generic threat of terrorism gratuitously
makes the United States an enemy of groups that do not threaten
U.S. security interests. Terrorism may be a horrendous means to any
end, but do the Basque E.T.A. and the Tamil Tigers really threaten
the United States? Strategy involves choice within a framework
of scarce resources; as such, it requires threat discrimination and
prioritization of effort.
(2) Substitute credible deterrence for preventive war as the primary
policy for dealing with rogue states seeking to acquire WMD. This means
shifting the focus of U.S. policy from rogue state acquisition of WMD
to rogue state use of WMD. There is no evidence that rogue state
use of WMD is undeterrable via credible threats of unacceptable
retaliation or that rogue states seek WMD solely for purposes of
blackmail and aggression. There is evidence, however, of failed
deterrence of rogue state acquisition of WMD; indeed, there is
evidence that a declared policy of preventive war encourages
acquisition. Preventive war in any case alienates friends and allies,
leaving the United States isolated and unnecessarily burdened (as
in Iraq). A policy of first reliance on deterrence moreover does not
foreclose the option of preemption; striking first is an inherent policy
option in any crisis, and preemption, as opposed to preventive war,
has legal sanction under strict criteria. Colin Gray persuasively
argues against making preventive war “the master strategic idea for
[the post-9/11 era]” because its “demands on America’s political,
intelligence, and military resources are too exacting.” The United
States:
has no practical choice other than to make of deterrence all that
it can be. . . . If this view is rejected, the grim implication is that
the United States, as the sheriff of world order, will require
heroic performances from those policy instruments charged
with cutting-edge duties on behalf of preemptive or preventive
operations. Preemption or prevention have their obvious
attractions as contrasted with deterrence, at least when they
work. But they carry the risk of encouraging a hopeless quest for
total security.119
Dr. Condoleezza Rice got it right in 2000: “[T]he first line of
defense [in dealing with rogue states] should be a clear and classical
statement of deterrence--if they do acquire WMD, their weapons
will be unusable because any attempt to use them will bring national
obliteration.”120
(3) Refocus the GWOT first and foremost on al-Qaeda, its allies,
and homeland security. This may be difficult, given the current
preoccupation with Iraq. But it was, after all, al-Qaeda, not a rogue
state, that conducted the 9/11 attacks, and it is al-Qaeda, not a rogue
state, that continues to conduct terrorist attacks against U.S. and
Western interests worldwide. The war against Iraq was a detour
from, not an integral component of, the war on terrorism; in fact,
Operation IRAQI FREEDOM may have expanded the terrorist
threat by establishing a large new American target set in an Arab
heartland. The unexpectedly large costs incurred by Operation
IRAQI FREEDOM and its continuing aftermath probably will not
affect funding of the relatively cheap counterterrorist campaign
against al-Qaeda. But those costs most assuredly impede funding of
woefully underfunded homeland security requirements.
Indeed, homeland security is probably the greatest GWOT
opportunity cost of the war against Iraq. Consider, for example,
the approximately $150 billion already authorized or requested
to cover the war and postwar costs (with no end in sight). This
figure exceeds by over $50 billion the estimated $98.4 billion
shortfall in federal funding of emergency response agencies in the
United States over the next 5 years. The estimate is the product
of an independent task force study sponsored by the Council on
Foreign Relations and completed in the summer of 2003. The study,
entitled Emergency Responders: Drastically Underfunded, Dangerously
Unprepared, concluded that almost two years after 9/11, “the United
States remains dangerously ill-prepared to handle a catastrophic
attack on American soil” because of, among other things, acute
shortages of radios among firefighters, WMD protective gear for
police departments, basic equipment and expertise in public health
laboratories, and hazardous materials detection equipment in most
cities.”121 And emergency responders constitute just one of dozens of
underfunded homeland security components.
(4) Seek rogue-state regime change via measures short of war. Forcible
regime change of the kind undertaken in Iraq is an enterprise
fraught with unexpected costs and unintended consequences. Even
if destroying the old regime entails little military risk, as was the case
in Iraq, the task of creating a new regime can be costly, protracted,
and strategically exhausting. Indeed, it is probably fair to say that
the combination of U.S. preoccupation in postwar Iraq and the more
formidable resistance a U.S. attack on Iran or North Korea almost
certainly would encounter effectively removes both of those states as
realistic targets of forcible regime change. The United States has in
any event considerable experience in engineering regime change by
measures short of war (e.g., covert action); and even absent regime
change there are means, such as coercive diplomacy and trade/aid
concessions, for altering undesirable regime behavior. Additionally,
even the most hostile regimes can change over time. Gorbachev’s
Russia would have been unrecognizable to Stalin’s, as would Jiang
Zemin’s China to Mao’s.
(5) Be prepared to settle for stability rather than democracy in Iraq, and
international rather than U.S. responsibility for Iraq. The United States
may be compelled to lower its political expectations in Iraq and by
extension the Middle East. Establishing democracy in Iraq is clearly
a desirable objective, and the United States should do whatever it
can to accomplish that goal. But if the road to democracy proves
chaotic and violent or if it is seen to presage the establishment of a
theocracy via “one man, one vote, one time,” the United States might
have to settle for stability in the form of a friendly autocracy of the
kind with which it enjoys working relationships in Cairo, Riyadh,
and Islamabad. This is certainly not the preferred choice, but it may
turn out to be the only one consistent with at least the overriding
near-term U.S. security interest of stability. Similarly, the United
States may have to accept a genuine internationalization of its
position in Iraq. A UN-authorized multinational force encompassing
contingents from major states that opposed the U.S. war against Iraq
would both legitimize the American presence in Iraq as well as share
the blood and treasure burden of occupation/reconstruction, which
the United States is bearing almost single-handedly.
(6) Reassess U.S. force levels, especially ground force levels. Operation
IRAQI FREEDOM and its aftermath argue strongly for an across-the-board
reassessment of U.S. force levels. Though defense
transformation stresses (among other things) substitution of
technology for manpower, postwar tasks of pacification and nationbuilding
are inherently manpower-intensive. Indeed, defense
transformation may be counterproductive to the tasks that face
the United States in Iraq and potentially in other states the United
States may choose to subdue and attempt to recreate. Frederick A.
Kagan argues that the reason why “the United States [has] been so
successful in recent wars [but] encountered so much difficulty in
securing its political aims after the shooting stopped” lies partly in
“a vision of war” that “see[s] the enemy as a target set and believe[s]
that when all or most of the targets have been hit, he will inevitably
surrender and American goals will be achieved.” This vision ignores
the importance of “how, exactly, one defeats the enemy and what
the enemy’s country looks like at the moment the bullets stop
fl ying.”122 For Kagan, the “entire thrust of the current program of
military transformation of the U.S. armed forces . . . aims at the
implementation and perfection of this sort of target-set mentality.”123
More to the point:
If the most difficult task facing a state that desires to change the
regime in another state is securing the support of the defeated
populace for the new government, then the armed forces of
that state must do more than break things and kill people. They
must secure critical population centers and state infrastructure.
They have to maintain order and prevent the development of
humanitarian catastrophes likely to undermine American efforts
to establish a stable new regime.124
These tasks require not only many “boots on the ground” for long
periods of time, but also recognition that:
If the U.S. is to undertake wars that aim at regime change and
maintain its current critical role in controlling and directing world
affairs, then it must fundamentally change its views of war. It is
not enough to consider simply how to pound the enemy into
submission with stand-off forces. War plans must also consider
how to make the transition from that defeated government to a
new one. A doctrine based on the notion that superpowers don’t
do windows will fail in this task. Regime change is inextricably
intertwined with nation-building and peacekeeping. Those
elements must be factored into any such plan from the outset. . . .
To effect regime change, U.S. forces must be positively in control of
the enemy’s territory and population as rapidly and continuously
as possible. That control cannot be achieved by machines, still
less by bombs. Only human beings interacting with other human
beings can achieve it. The only hope for success in the extension
of politics that is war is to restore the human element to the
transformation equation.125
Americans have historically displayed a view of war as a
substitute for politics, and the U.S. military has seemed congenitally
averse to performing operations other than war. But the Kagan thesis
does underscore the importance of not quantitatively disinvesting
in ground forces for the sake of a transformational vision. Indeed,
under present and foreseeable circumstances the possibility of
increasing ground force end-strengths should be examined.
The global war on terrorism as presently defined and conducted
is strategically unfocused, promises much more than it can deliver,
and threatens to dissipate U.S. military and other resources in an
endless and hopeless search for absolute security. The United States
may be able to defeat, even destroy, al-Qaeda, but it cannot rid the
world of terrorism, much less evil. |
