Few people have looked in detail at what the high priests of transformation actually are advocating. With the world awaiting the study by Andrew Marshall, now might be a good time to do so.
Military transformation has gripped official Washington in a World Wrestling Federation choke hold. It is "The Next Big Thing," like the "New Economy" only a few months ago. Its adherents populate the military services, Congress, press, think tanks, and—apparently—major offices in the Pentagon. Associates of new Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld insist that he, too, is a radical transformationist.
During the campaign, President George W. Bush ambiguously used the transformational words "skip a generation of weapons" in some of his speeches. Because he had so little else to say about defense specifics, his mandate on defense appears to be limited to this vague idea, yet the transformationists are out of the barn and riding hard. Few people have looked in detail at what the high priests of transformation actually are advocating. With the world awaiting the study by Andrew Marshall, now might be a good time to do so.
The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), a prestigious think tank run by Marshall acolyte Andrew Krepinevich, published "A Strategy for a Long Peace" a few months ago. It is probably the best single guide to what is in store for the U.S. military establishment if the transformation revolution is realized. The CSBA calls for the U.S. military to "transform itself," but it does not identify the kind of world the nation's military will face when it emerges from this transformation. This is perhaps understandable, since there are few prophets among us who can predict the future. However, the CSBA is confident that periods of extended military dominance like the United States enjoys now rarely last long. Indeed, the deep cuts in our military establishment that the study advocates would appear to make this a self-fulfilling prophesy.
The center relies on the twin analytical pillars of antiaccess and transformation. However, it is not clear its scholars have thought through prescriptively the real-world results of their recommendations for shrinking force structure. At the same time, they have erected an elaborate analytical structure in which the Congress and Bush administration can proceed with additional defense spending cuts. The CSBA study advocates ditching the strategy based on the requirement to fight two major theater wars concurrently, which some fear will lead to another massive downdraft in defense spending. It relies heavily on the operational insight that the United States will face a severe challenge in the coming decades with its access to overseas bases, but nonetheless proposes cutting aircraft carriers from 12 to 10 and amphibious ready groups from 12 to 10, and rolling back advanced amphibious assault vehicle production.
Additional CSBA study recommendations are as follows:
- Put more reliance on South Korea for a ground presence on the peninsula—in effect relinquishing one of the last U.S. toeholds on the Asian continent. This would be accompanied by massive cuts in Army force structure, scaled back M1AI tank upgrades, and cancellation of the Crusader artillery system.
- Build more B-2 bombers, although even here there is a Greenspan-like hedge that urges exercises to determine the B-2's antiaccess utility. There is no discussion of the B-2's leading role in the Serbian war, and apparently no realization that the Air Force is almost past the point of no return in reopening the B-2 production line.
- Put more reliance on computer-networked warfare and stealth, without relation to more than a handful of current programs. Like the Clinton administration's successful effort to use the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) to hold down F-22, B-2, and FA-18 E/F buys, the CSBA often endorses concepts that are barely out of the lab at the expense of platforms ready to go into production.
- Cancel the JSF, cut the (already shrunken) F-22 buy radically, and rely on upgraded F-16s and F-15s as manned aerial fighterbombers.
- Maintain an attack fleet of only 55 submarines and schedule additional service-life extensions for the Los Angeles (SSN-688)-class boats. The result for the Air Force and the Navy is reliance on older and less (or non-) stealthy platforms.
- Do not deploy a national missile defense system in the near term, but continue research on the concept.
The CSBA's premise seems to be that the United States is spending a great deal of money on "Cold War legacy" weapons that will be unusable in the dangerous new world emerging several decades from now. These are the weapons that help make the United States the most powerful nation on earth today. The authors acknowledge that their strategy will make the nation weaker in the near and medium term. They say repeatedly that the political system will not raise defense spending; rather than challenging this, they devise a strategy for advancing more cuts. Finally, they argue explicitly that it is not our place to be running a global Pax Americana, as we did in the 1990s.
The CSBA has found a myriad of valuable programs and platforms to be cut, canceled, delayed, or stretched out—mixed with ambiguous calls for more research and testing on high-technology weapons and concepts that will roll out a generation or more from now. The uninitiated observer might conclude that these ideas are traditional liberal arguments for defense spending reductions clothed in pro-military analysis.
It is likely that a Gore administration would have implemented this kind of a "transformation" strategy, as many of the leading transformationists are Democrats. It is troubling that many of the Bush defense appointees—and even the President himself—may be signing on to the foregoing arguments without weighing all the implications of modernization cuts and the enormous damage they will do to the ability of the United States to project power around the world.
Merrick Carey, formerly a Navy intelligence officer and senior congressional aide, is CEO of the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Virginia.