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December 7, 2009
Exclusive: Why Was Afghanistan ‘Neglected?’
The debate over how many U.S. troops are needed to stabilize Afghanistan should have spawned (and still can) a larger discussion over the role of such campaigns in American global strategy and force structure. In his televised speech December 1st, President Barack Obama took a swipe at George W. Bush for not sending enough troops to Afghanistan because of the war in Iraq, which Obama reminded his audience he had opposed. It is true that American ground forces were spread thin by having to fight two wars at once, even within the same theater of Central Command, which covers the entire Middle East. In July 2008, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Congress, “I don't have troops I can reach for . . . to send into Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq.” But why does a country with 300 million people and the largest national economy in the world have a military so small that it cannot fight small, counterinsurgency wars in two places at once?
It was Obama’s fellow Democratic President Bill Clinton who ordered drastic cuts in American ground troop strength, leaving his Republican successor without the combat power needed to sustain long campaigns on two fronts. In 1990, when the first Gulf war broke out, the Army had 18 divisions. Republican President George H. W. Bush reduced the Army to 14 divisions in the post-Cold War euphoria. Then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney called the 14 divisions the “irreducible minimum” needed to protect American interests. President Clinton then cut the Army further to 10 divisions.
The last time the Army had only 10 divisions was just before the Korean War, a conflict for which the country was clearly unprepared. By 1953, the U.S. had mobilized and deployed 327,000 troops to fight in Korea, about twice as many as were deployed to Iraq at the height of the recent surge, and more than triple what will be sent to Afghanistan. In Vietnam, American military strength peaked at over 540,000 in 1969. Are we a smaller, poorer country that we were half a century ago? Or is it our will rather than our resources that has declined?
It was under President Clinton that the “swing strategy” was first discussed. In this strategy, the U.S. would hold on one front while forces are concentrated to win on the other, primary front. Then forces would “swing” from the victorious campaign to reinforce the secondary front and push on to victory there. The Clinton Pentagon ceased talking about this strategy out of embarrassment, because it meant abandoning the “two war” military posture. The force level cuts quickly made it the only practical response when faced with multiple challenges. Today, the successful surge in Iraq (which Obama opposed) now allows forces to “swing” to Afghanistan.
Iraq deserved to be the primary focus of operations. In population, oil reserves and geographic location, Iraq is of much greater strategic value than Afghanistan. Militants only gain the power to upset regional balances or support large scale aggression when they can seize control of governments and mobilize national resources. Iraq is a much larger prize to Jihadists than is Afghanistan. It is also the key to containing Iran – a state radical Islamists did capture in 1979 as President Jimmy Carter stood idle.
In World War II the decision was made to make the defeat of Nazi Germany the top priority even though it had been Imperial Japan that had attacked Pearl Harbor. The superior military and economic strength of Germany made it the more dangerous enemy, so American and allied forces fighting in Europe had first call on manpower, equipment and supplies. Once fully mobilized, the U.S. “Arsenal of Democracy” poured forth the means to defeat Japan only a few months after Germany.
Today, even after a deadly attack on the United States itself followed by eight years of war, the country is not mobilized. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations are to blame for this, and their legacy infects the Obama administration.
A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement released in February 1996 by the Clinton White House set out what our military posture should be,
“As a nation with global interests, it is important that the United States maintain forces with aggregate capabilities on this scale. Obviously, we seek to avoid a situation in which an aggressor in one region might be tempted to take advantage when U.S. forces are heavily committed elsewhere. More basically, maintaining a ’two war’ force helps ensure that the United States will have sufficient military capabilities to deter or defeat aggression by a coalition of hostile powers or by a larger, more capable adversary than we foresee today.”
The problem has been that since the end of the Cold War, insufficient funding has been devoted to providing what is needed to carry out this strategy. The Bush administration embraced the post-Cold War “end of history” hubris in its National Security Strategy of the United States released in September 2002. “For most of the 20th century, the world was divided by a great struggle over ideas: destructive totalitarian visions versus freedom and equality. That great struggle is over.” It boldly, and foolishly, proclaimed, “The militant visions of class, nation, and race which promised utopia and delivered misery have been defeated and discredited. America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones. We are menaced less by fleets and armies than by catastrophic technologies in the hands of the embittered few.” Having been entirely carried away by the events of 9/11, it concluded, “A military structured to deter massive Cold War-era armies must be transformed to focus more on how an adversary might fight rather than where and when a war might occur.”
In other words, the downsizing of the Clinton years would not be reversed. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had a particular bias against ground troops and a well documented “minimalist” approach to war-fighting that nearly led to disaster in Iraq (and did play a major role in the GOP Congressional debacle of 2006).
Frederick W. Kagan, one of the intellects behind the Iraq surge, wrote in the Weekly Standard (February 20, 2006), “Although the Pentagon officially promises to ‘overmatch’ any potential adversary, a military policy of ‘just barely enough’ has been the reality since the beginning of the Bush administration. The 2006 QDR continues in this mold. It propounds a strategy that only heroes could make succeed…..It proposes a fundamental reorientation of military capabilities away from large-scale conventional war and toward irregular war (which seems to be largely code for insurgency and counterinsurgency) and counterterrorism.”
The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) stated that the armed forces should be able to "conduct a large-scale, potentially long-duration irregular warfare campaign including counterinsurgency and security, stability, transition and reconstruction operations" and "wage two nearly simultaneous conventional campaigns.” In the case of the conventional wars, the armed forces would explicitly adopt the “swing” strategy, fighting to win in the first, but only holding on the second front until forces could be shifted. The Bush team was honest about America’s weakened position, but still did nothing to correct it. In large part, it did not think the U.S. needed to be stronger – an untenable conclusion given the current contentious state of world affairs.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has brought this attitude with him into the Obama administration. He has been arguing for years that “irregular” warfare will be the main challenge for international security. He told the House Armed Services Committee May 13th he wants to “rebalance” U.S. forces “to be prepared for the wars we are most likely to fight – not just the wars we have been traditionally best suited to fight.” Exactly a year earlier, he said, “any major weapons program, in order to remain viable, will have to show some utility and relevance to...irregular campaigns.” Since then, many major weapons programs have been cut, most notably the F-22 air superiority fighter and naval shipbuilding. In “irregular” wars American command of the air and sea may be taken for granted, but against a rising “peer competitor” like China they will have to be fought for and we will need all the combat aircraft, warships and other heavy weapons American industry can produce.
Gates is right about most future conflicts being “irregular,” but wrong to let this drive force structure. Insurgencies, civil wars, and terrorist acts are always more common than large scale interstate wars. But it is the larger, international wars that determine the future global political alignment and the balance of power. The Gates approach will downsize American capabilities at a time when world politics is entering a period of dangerous flux. New major powers are entering the arena, old powers are becoming resurgent and regional “rogue” states are acquiring more advanced weapons. Another era of major conventional and strategic warfare is on the horizon.
American forces should provide the high-tech, heavy capabilities that less affluent allies (and adversaries) cannot field. The primary U.S. role is to deter the intervention of rogue states or peer competitor into local conflicts, as well as provide the overwhelming power needed to defeat such state adversaries in a direct confrontation. Only states have the power to upset regional balances in ways that pose a strategic threat to vital American interests. It is against such threats that the U.S. military must be prepared and have always been best suited. We must not focus so much on Afghanistan that we neglect the larger forces at work in the world.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor William R. Hawkins is a consultant specializing in international economic and national security issues. He is a former economics professor and Republican Congressional staff member.
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