On 20 January 2021, when he takes the oath of office, President Joe Biden will be dealt the worst hand of any president since Franklin Roosevelt. The COVID-19 pandemic is surging to record proportions and, worse, has been politicized. The nation is intractably divided politically with escalating tensions over race not seen since the 1960s. The economy is struggling. And relations with China and Russia are at their lowest point since the bad old days of the Cold War.
Against this background, while the U.S. military seems relatively unscathed by these crises, make no mistake: providing for the common defense is in trouble. Defense budgets, strategies, and organizations comprise the major reasons for concern. This means that the next administration must pay serious attention to these issues if a highly capable and ready military is to be maintained and ensure the next Secretary of Defense be well equipped and prepared to deal with each.
First the budget: Sustaining $750 billion a year for defense spending will be impossible for the long term because of growing deficits and a national debt that exceeds the annual gross domestic product. Barring a crisis or war, defense spending will shrink, possibly more dramatically than most expect.
The nasty “not-so secret” secret is that to maintain the current force at equivalent levels of readiness and modernization, at least 5–7 percent real annual growth in spending is needed. At 7 percent, principal doubles every ten years showing the insidious nature of uncontrolled cost growth. Indeed, that cost-growth figure may be underestimated as funding for space, hypersonics, artificial intelligence, and myriad other technologies will be expensive. Modernizing the entire strategic nuclear triad, with fixed or declining budgets, will come at the expense of conventional forces.
The Marine Corps is undergoing a major transformation. The Army is refocusing on Asia. But the trajectory for future spending will require more, not less, funding. The decision to buy two more Gerald R. Ford–class nuclear aircraft carriers, along with supporting escort and logistics forces, will require in excess of $60 billion over time. Without profound reform not seen in the Navy for 50 years to overhaul and revamp a force structure oriented toward big decks and nuclear submarines, or Congress approving hundreds of billions of additional dollars, the 355 or 400-ship Navy will never be achieved.
The second factor is strategy. The Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy (NDS) has expanded the Obama administration’s 4+1 scenario from the requirement “to deter and if war comes defeat” China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran to making great power competition its central theme.
During the Cold War, and after Nixon went to China in 1972, the competition with Moscow was geostrategic and ideological because the Soviet Union was not an economic power. China, however, is an economic power, and that extends the global competition well beyond the Pentagon.
The fundamental flaws with the NDS and the focus on a global competition among peers or near peers are two-fold. First, where is the off ramp? One of the causes of World War I was great power rivalries pitting the allies against the central powers. Have we forgotten that?
For the Pentagon, does competition mean engaging in an arms race (and recall the pre–World War I naval arms race) and continuing freedom of navigation operations (FON) in the South China and Baltic seas? Or is competition more than that? And if it is more, where does that lead, and are future conflicts and collisions inevitable or avoidable?
The second flaw rests in the aims of deterring and defeating that are aspirational at best. From what are China and Russia to be deterred? Is it direct aggression against neighbors where NATO’s Article 5 would be invoked? Is it Taiwan? Or are the Belt and Road Initiative, intimidation, and Russian active measures, such as meddling in domestic politics, part of deterrence?
If war comes, what constitutes success or victory? Neither has been defined. How are China or Russia to be defeated in a conflict that could escalate to the use of nuclear weapons? There are few answers to these questions.
The third issue is the Department of Defense’s organization. The National Security Act, the Unified Command Plan, and Goldwater-Nichols are the basic organizational foundations. In the 73 years since the National Security Act was passed in 1947, much has changed, including the growth of bloat, unresponsiveness, and too much redundancy
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was made the principal military advisor to the president. A vice chairman and other members were added. The influence and power of the joint staff likewise grew. The Department of Homeland Security and a Director of National Intelligence were created after 9/11. This year, a separate Space Force was approved, the first new armed service since the Air Force was created in 1947.
Goldwater-Nichols mandated more “jointness.” That meant joint assignments were required for promotion to senior ranks. However, jointness for the sake of jointness makes little sense.
Under the Unified Command Plan, the former Commanders, Naval Installation Commands (now combatant commanders), expanded to seven geographic and four functional commands. Each has staffs numbering in the hundreds or thousands. The offices of the Secretary of Defense and the joint staff have swelled to about 5,000 personnel each, including contractors. And the Army has more four-star generals than in World War II.
One wonders how the United States won that war with such a streamlined chain of command. Admiral Ernest King, Chief of Naval Operations and Commander-in-Chief, had Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief Pacific Fleet, and Admiral Harold R. (“Betty”) Stark, Commander-in-Chief Naval Forces Europe, reporting to him. General of the Army George Marshall likewise had two principal subordinates: General Douglas MacArthur in the Pacific and General Dwight D. Eisenhower in Europe.
For reform to work, any overhaul must include Congress. To ensure all members have worthy assignments and responsibilities, the number of committees and subcommittees has soared, leading to an excess of overlapping national security jurisdictions. Worse, the legislative process is broken. The current tripled-spaced House Defense Authorization Bill is 3,468 pages long. Clearly, no member of Congress has read or fully understands what is in that bill, despite having voted on it.
What is to be done? First, the NDS and global competition must go. Instead, the foundations for the strategy should be to contain, defend against, and engage potential adversaries without specifically naming any. Then, a “porcupine defense” for Europe and a “maritime mobile defense” in Asia should be implemented.
A porcupine defense is based on imposing costs through “disruptive” tactics and weapons systems to confuse, deceive, and derail any military attack. Targeting command and control and vital choke points with massive numbers of missiles, drones, and other unmanned, highly distributed systems and electronic and information warfare capabilities, supported by conventional forces, would overwhelm and deter an adversary.
A maritime mobile defense in the Pacific would contain China’s military to the first island chain with porcupine-defense tactics and systems emphasizing undersea warfare (and sea mines) and a World War II island-hopping campaign to dismantle China’s Belt and Road Initiative denying access to overseas resources and markets. The 2017–18 “Breaking the Mold” conferences held at the Naval War College described in detail both defenses. Those defenses could be affordable at about $600–650 billion a year.
Second, the National Security Act must be revised and the Unified Command Plan streamlined. Regarding the first, a small number of senior members of Congress must be given de facto membership on the National Security Council so that Congress is aboard for the takeoff as well as the landing for national security policies. And combatant commands should be broadened to have foreign officer/civilian deputies, or even commanders.
Northern and Southern Commands would be amalgamated into an America’s Command; European and Africa Commands into a Western Command; Indo-Pacific would be renamed Eastern Command; and Central Command unchanged. The two new commands should have a four-star deputy or the equivalent civilian rank.
Strategic and Space Commands should merge given the amount of overlap. Similarly, in an age of “hyper” or speed of light war, Cyber Command, National Security Agency, and Defense Intelligence Agency would form a new Information and Intelligence Command with a four-star commander. And as Special Operations Forces have an Assistant Secretary of Defense, the need for a separate combatant command is superfluous.
The Joint Chiefs should serve in that capacity on a full-time basis to focus on strategic thinking and planning. A separate set of service chiefs would be appointed to manage each service. Many of the functions of the joint and Office of the Secretary of Defense staffs can be merged. Finally, professional military education must be integrated, aligned, and more closely coordinated. The Navy’s Education for Seapower Study, rejected by a former Chief of Naval Operations, is the model for necessary reform.
Will this happen? Absent a crisis, the answer is no. But if another and perhaps more destructive Pearl Harbor, 9/11, or pandemic strikes, it will be too late. The reality is that the nation has a 20th-century defense organization that will not work in the 21st century.
The United States has a superb military. To maintain that military advantage, profound change is necessary to provide for the common defense in the coming decades of the 21st century.