Review of U.S. Army White Paper, "Serving a Nation at War"

The U.S. Army recently released "Serving a Nation at War-A Campaign Quality Army with Joint and Expeditionary Capabilities." This white paper—posted on our Web site—outlines the Army's vision for the future. This concludes our series of special reviews appraising this vision for the Army.

In 1953, Major General John K. Herr, the last U.S. Chief of Cavalry, asserted in his book, The Story of the U.S. Cavalry (Boston: Little, Brown), that the one immutable truth of war was that victory was not possible without horse cavalry. Unfortunately, it is this kind of thinking that has made the development of new strategies, tactics, and weapons difficult to impossible. If you say the horse is the key to success, you do not spend a lot of money and time on ideas such as strategic attack or on equipment such as airplanes-unless it is to carry the horse to the fight.

So it is with great regret that I see Acting secretary of the Army Les Brownlee and Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker's assertions, repeated explicitly and implicitly through this paper, that the soldier on the ground is the "irreplaceable base" of victory, that the soldier is the ultimate platform, that enabling the soldier and Marine should be the focus of all "interdependence" efforts, and that land combat is the decisive element of U.S. military power.

Secretary Brownlee and General Schoomaker correctly note the United States faces new challenges. Under these circumstances, however, we need to find better ways to win our wars. Asserting that ground power is the irreplaceable base makes strategic innovation difficult, must delight our enemies who have dreaded our few but highly successful forays into asymmetry, and makes true jointness impossible.

First, true jointness is simply the selection of the military capability (or capabilities) most likely to bring victory at the lowest cost and risk in any given situation. It is highly unlikely that land, sea, and air forces will be equally important to ensure victory. In some cases, just one of these capabilities should be employed; in other cases, all three might be useful. Even in the latter case, however, it would be rare that all three would have equal value at the same time. Thus, to argue that the soldier on the ground is the decisive element and should be the focus of all effort makes no sense and is the antithesis of jointness—or "interdependence," as the authors style it.

Second, we have a real national interest in winning wars with minimal friendly losses. Losses depend largely on the number of people exposed to enemy fire and on the technological differential. Ground operations, by their very nature, expose large numbers of personnel and mute technological advantages as range decreases. Conversely, very few-perhaps none-are exposed when the attack is from space or from unmanned aerial vehicles. A ground unit is by far the most expensive to commit in terms of putting lives at risk.

It is interesting to note the United States fought two successful conflicts without any participation by its own ground forces: Operation Allied Force (the war against Serbia in 1999) and El Dorado Canyon (the conflict with Libya in 1986). This does not tell us that all wars can be fought without ground forces, but it does tell us that some can be won decisively from the air. Two Americans died in these two conflicts. Further back in our history, we can see examples of wars won primarily by naval forces, so we know with certainty that ground forces are not the "irreplaceable base."

Given our experience, the cost of ground operations, and the promise of technology, one would think the U.S. military would be embarking on a crash program to develop alternatives to exposing its soldiers. Instead, we seem bent on perpetuating an ancient approach that gives us the least advantage over our opponents. Would not our country rejoice if we could achieve our political and military objectives without the heavy engagement and loss of ground forces? And if we cannot figure a way to do 100% of our fighting from a smart distance, we should expect the Army to make our ground fighters orders of magnitude more productive and less vulnerable than their World War Il ancestors—as happened with air warfare.

It is time for U.S. military leaders to get beyond obeisance to jointness and other platitudes. The purpose of a military is to win wars as quickly and cheaply as possible, not to be joint. If we are to find new and better ways to win, we must remove the doctrinal shackles that will drag us down to the level of our opponents. Every service must do its best to determine how it can make the greatest possible contribution to victory. That cannot happen if we accept the premise of the decisiveness of land warfare. If innovative war concepts and superior technology can win our wars, but in the process render a particular branch or service obsolete, so be it. After all, that is what the internal combustion engine did to the horse.

EDITOR'S NOTE: "Serving a Nation at War" is online at www.usni.org/proceedings/Articles04/PRO06armyservicenation.htm. Other reviews are in the July and August issues.