This html article is produced from an uncorrected text file through optical character recognition. Prior to 1940 articles all text has been corrected, but from 1940 to the present most still remain uncorrected. Artifacts of the scans are misspellings, out-of-context footnotes and sidebars, and other inconsistencies. Adjacent to each text file is a PDF of the article, which accurately and fully conveys the content as it appeared in the issue. The uncorrected text files have been included to enhance the searchability of our content, on our site and in search engines, for our membership, the research community and media organizations. We are working now to provide clean text files for the entire collection.
By Admiral David E. Jeremiah, U.S. Navy
Five short years after victory in World War II, hopes for a lasting peace lay in wreckage like these abandoned vehicles pushed clear of the road during the 1st Marine Division’s breakout from their Chosin Reservoir encirclement by the Chinese. We must never re-learn that bitter lesson on the barren ridges of another Korea: to ignore military needs in peacetime is to invite disaster and defeat in a future war.
LIFE (DAVIO DOUGLAS DUNCAN)
The Cold War was the longest sustained military effort in American history. In response to the massive military threat posed by the Soviet Union and its sullen partners, the United States maintained an unprecedented peacetime military readiness for more than forty years. In financial terms, this dwarfed even World War II as our costliest military undertaking.
Today, the Cold War is over. The Soviet Union has ceased to exist. Its successor republics neither growl military threats nor cling to expansionist ideologies. The once-formidable Soviet armed forces are fragmented and decaying; the immense pressures previously generated by Soviet military power have subsided. The entire international community is now adjusting to a world in which
Soviet belligerence is no longer a daily fact of life.
For the United States, these changes mean that our security interests can be protected now and in the future with much smaller military forces. The current debate over U.S. defense spending is not just about size, however; the full purpose and character of our armed forces are under reconsideration. This discussion of our future security needs can be reduced to two questions: First, what do we want our armed forces to do? Second, what do we want our armed forces to be? The first question considers ends, while the second deals with means.
A New U.S. Strategy
What our armed forces should do is a question of strategy. During the Cold War, their main role was clear. They were to deter a Soviet attack and—if deterrence ever failed—they were to fight and win. Fortunately, they did the deterrence part so well that they never had to fight the Soviets. And even though containing the Soviet Union was their primary mission, it was never their sole mission. They have had plenty else to do over the years—everything from fighting two wars in Asia, to protecting U.S. interests in regional hot spots, to supporting humanitarian relief operations. And now, even though the Soviet Union is gone, those other missions remain—as we have been reminded repeatedly over the past year.
The United States has recognized the strategic shift and understood its implications for some time. Nearly two years ago, we discarded the Soviet threat as the basis for sizing our forces, and began to plan significant cuts. Nevertheless, history warns us that we should not be complacent about our future military needs. Any realignment of U.S. military power should follow a co- ■ herent strategy for the future—not just a blind urge to reduce defense spending.
We have not confronted this problem since the end of World War II. Then, there was no orderly curtailment of American military power; the postwar demobilization was an uncontrolled race for the exits. Just five months after Japan’s surrender. Admiral Chester Nimitz complained that the United States, by itself, had “done what no enemy could do, and that is reduce its Navy almost to impotency . . . [Today] your Navy has not the strength in ships and personnel to carry on a major military operation."
The U.S. Army suffered a similar fate. At war’s end. the Army had 6 million men under arms in nearly 100 battle-tested divisions; by March 1948. it had shriveled to barely 530,000, most of whom were unhappy conscripts occupying Germany and Japan. In disgust. Army Chief of Staff General Omar Bradley wrote that the once-great U.S. Army had “almost no combat effectiveness,” and that it “could not fight its way out of a paper bag."
Also in 1948, the first Secretary of Defense, James V. Forrestal, complained to Congress that possession of the atomic bomb seemed to have “engendered [a]. . . mistaken sense of security and complacency” across the nation. Two years later, the security and complacency were tom to bits on the barren ridges of Korea. There, Americans relearned the bitter lessons of Bataan and the Kasserine Pass:
to ignore future military needs in peacetime is to invite disaster and defeat in war.
In adapting to a post-Cold War world, we are determined not to succumb to the same shortsightedness. Consequently, we have formulated a new strategy to guide our force-structure decisions. This strategy was first laid out by President Bush in August 1990, and has since been published as the National Security Strategy of the United States. A more recent document, National Military Strategy addresses the military aspects of our national strategy. Both documents postulate the four pillars of our future security needs: strategic deterrence and defense, forward presence, crisis response, and reconstitution. Each of these pillars is critical; together, they outline in the broadest sense what we want our future armed forces to do.
Strategic Deterrence and Defense
During the Cold War, nuclear weapons were the crown jewels of U.S. security. We knew that the Soviet Union had the strategic power to destroy the United States, so we needed adequate nuclear forces to ensure that they would never dare to launch a nuclear first strike. Today, the Soviet Union is no more. We have seized this opportunity to reduce our own forces—in return for huge cuts in the nuclear stockpile of the former Soviet Union. We will still retain our triad, but in a smaller and reconfigured form.
Nevertheless, we cannot eliminate our nuclear deterrent completely. As long as nuclear weapons exist anywhere in the world, we will need credible strategic forces, if only to protect ourselves from nuclear blackmail. Equally urgent is our need for strategic defense systems. Our inspections of Saddam Hussein’s facilities have opened our eyes—how easy it is to build or buy weapons of mass destruction.
By the end of this century, more than 20 Third World nations might have ballistic missiles. Perhaps a dozen of these could have nuclear warheads—or chemical or biological warheads, which are easier to make and harder to detect. Therefore, despite the end of our nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union, we will still need strategic forces to deter or defend against future attacks on the United States or on our forces overseas. And we must think—and take action—about that now, not 10 or 15 years down the road.
Forward Presence
During the Cold War, we ringed the Soviet Union with forward-deployed land, sea and air forces. These forces reassured our allies about our determination, while standing ready to carry out a war-winning strategy in the event of conflict. The U.S. Army and Air Force were prepared to wage the main battle along the central front in Europe, while the maritime strategy assured complementary efforts by our naval forces.
Today, we are taking advantage of the new international environment and drawing down our overseas forces.
The most dramatic shift is coming in Europe, where we’ve already removed more than 90,000 troops. We’re making smaller adjustments in Asia and the Pacific. These reductions do not mean that we will retreat into isolationism. The United States still has important strategic interests abroad that best can be served by a healthy forward presence.
The Western Pacific provides an excellent example. The Pacific Ocean area is vital to our economic wellbeing; more of our overseas trade flows across the Pacific than the Atlantic. Our forward presence there promotes regional stability by deterring would-be troublemakers, such as North Korea. Similarly, the presence of U.S. military forces precludes any power vacuum that could lead to a regional arms race. Our forward military presence also reminds everyone that we are a Pacific power, and that we remain deeply committed to protecting our interests in that region.
Forward presence helps us in other ways. By keeping some forces abroad, we can react more quickly to regional crises. For example, our bases and depots in Europe were absolutely essential for the rapid movement of U.S. forces to the Persian Gulf for Operation Desert Shield. And when we rescued many U.S. and foreign diplomatic personnel from Somalia last year, we were able to do that only because we had Marines and amphibious lift nearby in the Persian Gulf. That posse arrived just as the rebels were coming over the embassy walls. This difficult short-response mission would have been impossible if our closest forces had to stage from the United States.
With future conflicts likely to be regional contests arising on short notice, we must continue to forge close working relationships with our friends abroad. One of the important lessons of Operation Desert Storm was the value of peacetime military exercises and exchanges. These, too, are an important component of forward presence, and they lay the groundwork for melding U.S. forces with those of friendly nations, in the event of crisis.
Crisis Response
The third pillar of our new strategy is crisis response.
We have no desire to be the world’s policeman. On the other hand, the United States occupies a unique position of power and authority in the world—a stature enhanced both by the demise of the Soviet Union and the successful international effort to eject Iraq from Kuwait.
It would be irresponsible of the United States to abrogate this responsibility. We live in an increasingly interdependent world. American interests are best served by being ready and able to play a constructive role—politically, economically, and, if necessary, militarily—whenever future conflicts or crises erupt.
There is strong likelihood that such crises will be a familiar part of the international landscape for years to come. The Joint Staff recently undertook a series of studies to forecast the national security environment in the year 2025. We found several disturbing trends. By 2025, the world’s population will approach ten billion people—nearly double
today’s population. At present, about 84% of the world’s population lives in lesser-developed countries. Three decades from now, without an international effort to control worsening social, economic and demographic conditions—that figure will increase beyond 90%, intensifying the strain on fragile Third World economies and infrastructure. We expect to see increasing competition for scarce natural resources, including such things as petroleum and possibly even fresh water. Up to 25% of the earth’s population could go hungry every day, and many governments could chronically be unable to meet even the most basic needs of their citizens. Unless these trends can be stopped and reversed, we foresee a continuing need for U.S. armed forces that are structured, trained and equipped for crisis response.
Reconstitution
The final foundation of our new strategy is reconstitution. Reconstitution involves forming, training, equipping and fielding new fighting forces. Today, there is no adversary anywhere in the world whose military power approaches that of the United States. However, we cannot rule out the possibility that such an adversary might
emerge some day, either in the form of a single nation or as a coalition of hostile states. Faced with such a threat, we must be able to reconstitute larger military forces.
Obviously, many problems are associated with reconstitution. Two, in particular, are frequently overlooked: First, as our forces get smaller, there will be less peacetime opportunity for future military leaders to practice command-and-control of large units and fleets. In 1917, General John Pershing was selected to command U.S. forces in France, partly because he was the only serving Army officer who had led anything larger than a regiment (a year earlier, Pershing had led a multiregimental punitive expedition into Mexico, in search of Pancho Villa). Allied leaders harshly criticized Pershing’s inexperienced commanders and staff officers, and even proposed that American battalions be assigned to British or French divisions where they could benefit from more-competent higher leadership. We never want our higher-level battle- management skills to decay to such an extent in the future. Professional schooling, simulations, and computer exercises can help preclude this to a certain degree. Nevertheless, this will remain a critical area, should we ever need to reconstitute large combat forces.
A second reconstitution problem is one of industrial mobilization. As our armed forces get smaller, there will probably be some realignment in the industries that support our defense needs. Some suggest that our reconstitution plans should include a policy of preserving essential portions of our present industrial base. Prudent planning in this area is both reasonable and necessary. On the other hand, a wholesale program to sustain defense industries, no matter what, is both strategically implausible and fiscally impossible.
Technologies are evolving so rapidly that we cannot know for certain which sorts of industrial capabilities will be most crucial a decade or more from now. To preserve— at great expense—some shipyards, tank plants, and other rnajor facilities that exceed our year-to-year needs would be unwise. It is as if in 1918 we had decided to pump money into farms for breeding horses and mules, only to find in 1941 that mechanized warfare had made horse cavalry and mule-drawn logistics obsolete. Because of changes in the international arena, we can now expect eight-to-ten years’ warning time, in which to reconstitute larger forces. Given such timelines, large capital investments to preserve our current base may not support our future requirements.
The Base Force' A Force for the Future
The four pillars of our national security strategy explain what we want our armed forces to do in the years to come. Based on this foundation, we also have developed a blueprint of what our forces should be.
After evaluating our future strategic needs we developed a new force structure to meet those needs. This is called the Base Force. It will give us armed forces that are much smaller than we fielded throughout the Cold War—and even smaller than today’s. Forces or systems designed solely to deal with the Soviet Union are being eliminated, and remaining forces are being realigned to be more responsive to regional crises.
The Base Force is made up of four functional packages: a strategic force, an Atlantic force, a Pacific force, and contingency forces. This Base Force — smaller, leaner, more oriented toward crisis response—serves as a general outline of what we want our future forces to be.
The progress of the Base Force can be quantified in part: nearly 700 bases closed or closing worldwide; more than 100 programs canceled or curtailed; and nearly 500,000 active-duty servicemen and women—roughly the size of the force that surged to victory in Desert Storm— being cut from our armed forces. The Army is disbanding one-third of its divisions; the Navy will retire more than 100 ships; and the Air Force will lose one-third of its fighter wings. The Marines also will get smaller.
Our reserve-component warriors will remain a vital part of the total force. But just as missions and requirements for our active forces are shifting, roles for our reserve components are changing, as well. During the 1980s, we built up our Reserve and National Guard forces as another means of countering perceived Soviet military superiority in Europe. We no longer need those units to reinforce NATO. Similarly, many reserve component units no
we see how the world adjusts to the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union. For example, it would be devastating if the new democratic governments in Rus-
longer have a valid mission, now that the active units they support are themselves being disbanded. Accordingly, we plan to reduce our reserve components by roughly 220,000.
When these cuts are complete, the Reserve and National Guard will still comprise 36% of our overall force—the same percentage as today.
Some suggest that we should speed up these cuts. That would be unwise. We need to proceed with caution, while
sia, the Ukraine or the other republics were to be overthrown by authoritarian regimes that might emerge Phoenix-like from the ashes of Soviet communism. Across the Eurasian land mass, sparks from ethnic, economic or political grievances could touch off civil wars and even regional conflicts. It is still too early for us to dismiss entirely the possibility of serious security problems arising in Europe—or elsewhere.
We have more reasons to continue making our military cuts at a measured pace. First, we have an obligation to our volunteer warriors. Should they be stripped abruptly of their uniforms and given bus tickets home? Of course not—they deserve much better treatment!
A second and even greater problem concerns the impact that accelerated cuts would have on our society at large. We are currently drawing down our forces at the maximum rate possible consistent with preserving a combat-ready force structure. Any accelerated, slash-and-burn dismantling of our armed forces would damage our military capability and would intensify the economic pain many individuals and communities are already suffering.
Our forces need to get smaller in a way—and at a pace—that supports our future needs. But as this happens, we need to be careful to protect the basic character of those forces. We need to preserve those vital ingredients that gave us such an overwhelming victory in the Gulf War. Our warriors, our weapons and our systems performed so magnificently that it would be easy to take such excellence for granted. We cannot. We must not. On the contrary, we must nurture two essential elements of their character.
First, we are committed to protecting the quality of our military personnel. Since the end of the draft in the early 1970s, every person in uniform has been a volunteer. These men and women are talented and eager to perform. We have taken them in, we have trained them, and we continue to mold them into a winning team. We care for them and their families. We toughen them in demanding exercises, under hard conditions—a process that consumes spare parts and equipment, even in peacetime. In the end, we field a joint fighting force that is second to none anywhere in the world.
We need to preserve the quality of that volunteer force. To do this, we need to ensure they have money to train, that they have money for spare parts, and money to feed their families. They need to be razor- sharp, so they can fight and win in the unknown crises of the future. The military must be a career that attracts young, bright, dedicated people. This will be jeopardized if drastic budget outs leave us with a hollow, demoralized or unbalanced force.
We also want to preserve our technological superiority—which for most of this century, has been the hallmark of U.S. forces. During the Cold War, we needed technological superiority to counter the great conventional forces of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies. It is unlikely that we will face such long numerical odds again, but we still need high-tech weapons and systems to minimize the risk to U.S. forces and to help bring swift, decisive conclusions to any conflicts.
We will, however, change the way we procure advanced systems. Because the Cold War has ended, we no longer need to develop and field marginally advanced systems on a continuous crash basis. There is less urgency to go immediately from development to full-scale production.
We still want our future military forces to be technologically superior, but we will pursue that goal in a more deliberate and less costly fashion. As we do that, we will seek significant technological advances in our research- and-development efforts. Meanwhile, we will try to integrate new technologies into existing platforms, in order to reduce large capital outlays for completely new platforms and systems.
This, then, describes what our nation’s future forces will be. The Base Force will be smaller than the one we have today. While still providing strategic deterrence and defense, it will reflect reconfigured armed forces that emphasize crisis response. We will continue to maintain a credible forward presence overseas, and we will keep a reconstitution capability—in case we ever need to build larger forces. Above all, we will retain those vital characteristics—superb personnel and technological superiority—that are the keys to American military excellence.
We have adapted both our strategy and our force structure to a post-Cold War world. Once, our strategy and forces were oriented on the Soviet threat; now, we have reoriented both strategy and forces toward preserving essential capabilities in an unpredictable world. Some people are uncomfortable with this, and have expressed dismay that our strategy and the Base Force are not tied to a particular threat assessment. Such reasoning is not valid in a changing and unpredictable world. We cannot—and we should not—narrow our force requirements to only those threats we can see and measure today. In 1950, a secure and complacent America did not expect North Korea to invade South Korea. More recently, no one expected Saddam Hussein to try to grab all of Kuwait. Because we were not prepared for the unknown and unexpected, the Korean War cost us thousands of American lives in years of bitter fighting. But because we were prepared in 1990, we drove Iraq out of Kuwait—with only a few hundred coalition casualties— in a matter of months.
The Base Force is our national insurance policy for the future. When people buy insurance, they are not required by their insurance agents to itemize specific accidents or injuries they think may occur during the term of the policy. They buy enough insurance to give themselves peace of mind against a wide variety of possible hazards. The Base Force will do that for the United States.
Nearly 2,000 years ago, Vegetius warned that “in the midst of peace, war is looked on as an eventuality too distant to merit consideration.” The United States failed to consider this “distant eventuality” after World War I and World War II. The result was armed forces that were woefully unprepared for war—in 1941 and again in 1950. Today, in the aftermath of the Cold War, we are once again reducing our armed forces to reflect new international realities. But this time we are doing so in accordance with a strategy that recognizes our continuing security interests, and that will give the United States the forces it needs to face the future with confidence.
Admiral Jeremiah is the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.