For more than 50 years, U.S. national security policy has been organized to defy a designated enemy. But the new road forward offers no such certainty; we therefore must develop multiple paths, encouraging innovation and experimentation, so we can choose the most promising one(s) whenever the need for choice arises.
Change is troubling, even when it is welcome. We are the undisputed victors in the Cold War. We won the Gulf War in a convincing manifestation of U.S. military art. Still, we lurch into the bright light of a post-containment, unipolar world with little political or military consensus.
Virtually everything we do in national security policy and strategy developed during the Cold War. Then, the enemy threat was known in great detail, and technology was on a predictable linear path. Our containment policy provided at once a vision, a goal, and a strategy. Now we face a period of profound uncertainty with a national security system and structure designed and built to make decisions in that strategic situation of absolute certainty.
We have lost our best enemy, we are in the midst of a great technological revolution, and our policy is an ad hoc reaction to events. What does “national security” mean now? Can we plan, sell, and conduct a viable national security strategy and foreign policy with our old institutions, lacking a clear and apparent threat? Do we have enduring national interests around the world, or will the lack of direct Communist-bloc competition mean an isolationist United States with no sense of direction? Can we understand a world that is not clearly “us versus them?” How can we possibly do defense planning with so many unknowns?
“For the past fifty years, American foreign policy has been formed in response to the threat posed by this country’s opponents and enemies”1—first World War II and then the fear of communism and the Soviets. Our current governmental institutions and processes—and our attitudes—took shape in World War II and grew rigid in the hot and cold limited conflicts within the U.S.-U.S.S.R. bipolar framework. The Communist threat is gone, but we are still searching for a substitute. For more than 50 years, we have organized our national security policy to defy a designated enemy; our system cannot function without one.
Too often, if an organization does not know what to do, it will fall back on doing what it knows. For decades, Sears ran a world-class catalog sales business. When Sam Walton began building WalMart stores all over rural and suburban America, Sears’s reaction was to “product-improve” its catalog business. Why? Because it was what Sears knew. This linear extrapolation of its established corporate strategy failed because Sam Walton brought product availability to the same shoppers—an asymmetric, offsetting strategy that trumped Sears’s strongest operation.2
We won the Cold War and showed world-class capability at high-intensity mechanized combat in the Gulf. Much of what now passes for innovation and vision in the national security apparatus is simply product-improving our ability to win another Desert Storm.
We need to accept the fact that we are in a period of uncertainty, and adapt to that, rather than continue our attempts to fit the future into the mold of the present. If we consider the future in two parts, we can find some clues.
In the predictable near term, there is no potentially fatal, Soviet-scale challenge to our national existence, and various sources predict that we will have about ten years warning of an emerging lethal threat. We are apt to remain the dominant military power, with high technology as our strong suit. The non-developing world will continue to be chaotic and will engage our interests—and our forces—in matters of conscience.
Desert Storm II is improbable, precisely because it is what we do so well. Absent miscalculation—by us or by a potential aggressor—a direct conventional military challenge to the United States anywhere is less likely now.
It is more likely that those who wish to challenge our interests will find offsetting strategies: terrorism, revolutionary or urban warfare, weapons of mass destruction, or other devices. Conventional forces arrayed on the battlefield in the classic sense will spend ever-increasing time and effort defending their base areas and infrastructure, groping for ways to come to grips with an elusive, non- symmetric enemy.
Nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction will be a growing concern. The states of the former Soviet Union retain a large, relatively unsecured nuclear arsenal and a number of highly qualified but underpaid, underemployed, scientific minds. Some degree of proliferation will take place. The threat of localized nuclear warfare is a growing possibility that could affect us all.
In the unpredictable far term, we may face a range of possible threats arising from population increases and migrations, progressive urbanization, the movement of wealth, ethnic conflicts, natural disasters, fantastic technological possibilities, or history, among others. We do not know what will happen. We do not know when we will face our next major security challenge. We do not know who will challenge us or how. This is not the time to make any irrevocable decisions on how we want to respond.
Thus, we have two imperatives: We must navigate safely through the predictable near term, while simultaneously building the ability to adapt to unpredictable future threats and requirements. To do this, we must change our national security system—including the military-industrial complex—equipping it to handle uncertainty. If we don’t, we in essence will be improving our catalog-sales capabilities while the world is shopping at WalMart.
How do we do this? We must create multiple paths to the future so that we can pick the most promising whenever the need for choice arises. We must adapt the national security system so that it rewards ingenuity and innovation, allows different organizations to experiment with different solutions, and accommodates different ideas. “I don’t know—yet” must become an acceptable answer at hearings and in the press when future needs are questioned. Institutional wisdom must recognize and accept those things we do not know, and resist the temptation to analyze uncertainty in definitive ways.
One historical example may help illustrate what we need to do. During the 1920s and 1930s, a rich menu of capabilities was developed that would prove invaluable during World War II: carrier aviation, armored warfare, amphibious and submarine warfare, and strategic bombing, among others. These innovations, all considered rank heresy in their day, were developed by “niche competitors.” Their champions adapted doctrines and strategies to sometimes barely emerging technologies, often against the opposition of entrenched interests. Admiral William
New computer techniques used for the MV-22 may point the way to the future. If manufacturers can leverage the capabilities of computer-aided design, the services might be able to get better prototyping and modular upgrade capability in much smaller lots of equipment. Moffett had to face the battleships’ “gun club” to bring carrier aviation to reality. Marine Corps amphibious warfare visionaries and pioneers had to face down the constabulary traditionalists. There were intense rivalries among and within the services, but innovation worked. There were failures, of course—the tank destroyer, “light” tanks, huge seaplanes, the dirigible, and others—but they were a small price to pay for the successes.
This provides an interesting contrast to our current approach: grafting emerging technologies to existing doctrines, enshrining doctrine as authoritative and directive (are we very far from dogma and canon?), and fitting the future to our preferred vision of the present.
Converting the way we do business within the federal bureaucracy will be a challenge, but it must be done, and it must be paralleled by changes within industry. If those who manufacture defense systems can leverage the (barely) emerging technologies of computer-aided design, we may be able to build a better prototyping and modular upgrade capability into much smaller lots of equipment. Microproduction and micromarketing work in the private sector; they must be adapted to the defense sector.
If we can use modern/future design techniques instead of “bulk buys” to reduce unit price, then perhaps we can have smaller organizations experimenting with different future strategies and doctrine. The new computer techniques used for the MV-22 and the joint advanced strike technology program may point the way to the future. When conditions demand, promising prototypes can go into limited production, and existing equipment can receive modular upgrades to remain competitive.
The military and economic powers of a nation tend to mutate in tandem. Our industrial society produced the world’s greatest industrial-age military. Now, the private sector is using niche competitors, microproduction, horizontal organizational structures, and other techniques to cope with the information age. The current defense planning paradigm of vertical, hierarchical organizations, centralized decision making, large-scale mass production, one “authoritative doctrine,” and one “right” defense answer must change as well. If we don’t know what the future will be, we need to plot more than one way to get there. The services must be able to pursue their own, separate, visions. When the fog clears, the nation will invest in the concepts that are most productive and most applicable.
1 William G. Hyland, “America’s New Course," Foreign Affairs, Spring 1990, p. 2.
2 Dr. Andrew Krepinevich, head of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, has developed a detailed defense planning concept that incorporates many lessons from the ways established corporations accommodated major changes.
The author is indebted to Dr. Krepinevich for many of the themes in this article.
Colonel Gregson is Deputy Director, Office of Program Appraisal, in the Office of the Secretary of the Navy.