We don't have enough ships, aircraft, submarines, sailors, and Marines to go around. We have to prioritize missions to allocate support, meaning that some missions are falling through the cracks.
In 1918, one of the most idealistic presidents in our history conceived of a perfect world, where the Great Powers would police each other and universal peace would reign, as the world finally became safe for democracy. He was, like many of the statesmen of his era, horrified by the destruction of World War I. And so he dreamed of an organization—the League of Nations—that would prevent such wide scale destruction from ever happening again.
Unfortunately, President Woodrow Wilson was ignoring hundreds—thousands—of years of history. As Georges Clemenceau later remarked, "President Wilson had come to Europe with a program of peace for all men. His ideal was a very high one, but it involved great difficulties, owing to these century-old hatreds between some races." Wilson failed to recognize that the pattern of conflict in the years before the war would negate any chance for universal peace.
The period from the turn of the century to World War I was one of rapid and uncontrolled growth and expansion. Economically and technologically, Europe was becoming a true world market, with unparalleled material and industrial growth. At the same time, Europeans or their former colonists (in the Americas), having controlled 67% of the earth's surface in 1878, by 1914 controlled an astounding 84%. Yet, amid all this, numerous sporadic little wars were being fought—in Afghanistan, in Burma, and on the African continent. There also was a growing sense of nationalism as colonized nations strove to cast off the yoke of imperialism.
As Samuel Huntington points out in his landmark book. Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, "By 1910 the world was more one politically and economically than at any other time in human history. International trade as a proportion of the gross world product was higher than it had ever been before.... Civilization meant Western Civilization."
These conditions sound eerily familiar. Consider our world today: unparalleled economic prosperity and interdependence, the primacy of Western culture, widespread growth of democracy, U.S. warfighting supremacy, and technological and information revolutions in the global marketplace. Many nations are struggling for self-determination and national identity, trying to work together for peace but also concerned with their own security and interests. Most important, they are willing to go to war to achieve their aims. Now, as then, a single incident could ignite the world. Despite our advancements, we are leaving this century in much the same way we entered it.
President Wilson was wrong in 1918 when he believed that we would have a universal peace. More than 70 years later, we were wrong when we believed that the collapse of the Soviet Union finally would bring a world safe for democracy; when we began to believe in a peace dividend; when we counted on that peace dividend and shrank our military dramatically.
Did we learn nothing from history?
It is understandable that when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 we felt an overwhelming sense of relief. The Cold War was over. We had won—and after 40 years, we were ready and eager to let down our guard. Unfortunately, we knowingly ignored the threat of future conflict and the potential for increased "peacetime" requirements. Our armed stalemate with the Soviet Union—an ideological conflict that divided the world simply into "us" and "them"—was really but a brief anomaly in the history of international conflict. Most animosities were contained temporarily by the mere threat of superpower involvement and escalation; without it, old rivalries and conflicts were free to reemerge.
Once again, we are seeing a rising surge of nationalism in Russia, in Yugoslavia, in Africa, and elsewhere. We witness conflicts over borders and between different ethnic and religious groups. On the evening news, we hear about genocide, terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and the displacement of tens of thousands of refugees. There still are ancient animosities that lie just beneath the surface, waiting for a spark to set them off—as graphically demonstrated in Rwanda, Sudan, Iraq, and Iran, and Kosovo. Such conflicts always have occurred, but they are more visible in our interdependent, multimedia world, and they are more difficult to ignore.
Our military's mission has evolved—from containment of the Soviet Union to enhancing security, promoting prosperity, and enlarging democracy. This new mission opens for us a slew of new engagements. As the world becomes more interdependent, our interests are interwoven with the interests of our allies and foes alike. International economic prosperity is contingent on international peace and stability. Thus we are engaged far and wide—and with fewer forces to bear the load, we are feeling the strain.
Keeping the past in mind, we can expect that the foreseeable future will offer us more of what we see today—chaos throughout much of the world. A strong military will be essential for ensuring our national security, and will be expected by many to continue to act as the world's de facto 911 force. Might we have been presumptuous in counting on a peace dividend?
Just look at what has happened in the last decade. Who would have anticipated in 1988 that we would be at war in the Arabian Gulf in 1991 and that Russia would be our ally? Who knew in 1994 that two years later we would be in the midst of a crisis in the Taiwan Strait? In 1997, did anyone predict that we would be at war with Yugoslavia in 1999, and once again at odds with Russia?
The fundamental challenge facing both foreign policy decision makers and our military is that no one could have predicted these events. The problem is that we have continued to try to fit the world into our bipolar Cold War foreign policy. It just doesn't work anymore. As author Samuel Huntington says, "The Cold War division of humanity is over. The more fundamental divisions of humanity in terms of ethnicity, religions, and civilizations remain and spawn new conflicts." The result is that we could just as easily find ourselves at war with Yugoslavia as with North Korea. The opportunities for conflict will be much more numerous in the future. We must have both a foreign policy and a military equipped to operate in this new world order.
We have been embroiled in crisis almost continually since the Cold War ended: the Panama invasion; the Persian Gulf War; the ongoing conflict with Iraq; the Somalia intervention, the troop deployment in Haiti; the intervention and peacekeeping in Bosnia; cruise missiles strikes into Sudan and Afghanistan; and today, Kosovo. There is no reason to believe that this trend will not continue. We have to be able to adapt to this rapidly changing environment, meeting the challenges of the present even while preparing for an unknown future.
Does this seem like a time when we are benefiting from a peace dividend? From a Fleet Commander's perspective, I'll tell you that our naval force is oversubscribed already, just trying to keep up with myriad national-level taskings. Because of the drastic cuts following the end of the Cold War, the military now is in an asset-limited environment. Our force structure levels are lower than at any other time since before World War II; in real dollars, our budget is the smallest it has been in the past 50 years. At the same time, we are operating in an increasingly challenging environment in terms of international conflict and engagement.
We don't have enough ships, aircraft, submarines, sailors, and Marines to go around. We have to prioritize missions to allocate support, meaning that some missions are falling through the cracks. In the long term, unless these issues are resolved, we may be forced to decide whose stability and safety are more important—do we protect the Kosovars or do we come to the aid of the South Koreans? How do we continue to be the "Guardians of Democracy" with a too-small force? Unequivocally, the answer must not be that we lose effectiveness as an instrument of national policy and strategy. We cannot afford to let that happen. We must bring our forces into balance with the required missions.
This broad scope of missions and engagement also forces us to rethink the metrics we use to determine our force structure requirements. We have transitioned to an era when supporting our national interest in peacetime requires a larger force structure than any near-term wartime requirements would. While we struggle to resolve this dichotomy, we must find ways to allocate our current force structure to meet multiple and diverse taskings without compromising our own security and interests.
We must have the right force level to support national interests. That may mean building up to, or maintaining, a larger force than that for which we currently are planning. There must be balance between what we expect our military to be capable of doing and what we are willing to support with funding. One or the other must flex—either we limit our global engagement or we support a more appropriate force structure. We cannot continue to do more with less. We must have the right force level to support our foreign policy; without it our foreign policy eventually will become ineffective.
It is critical that we reassess our current capabilities to achieve the right balance for the next Navy and the Navy after next. The 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) determined a force of 116 surface combatants, 12 carrier battle groups, 12 amphibious ready groups, and 50 submarines. We already have reason to believe that this is insufficient. Recent events in Kosovo that required the shift of WestPac assets—above, USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63)—to the Persian Gulf demonstrated once again the need for 15 carrier battle groups to be able to cover and influence events in three major theaters simultaneously.
By shifting the forward-deployed carrier from Japan to the Arabian Gulf, the Pacific theater was without a carrier to respond in the event of a crisis with North Korea. Traditionally, we have counted on the carrier battle group deployed to the Mediterranean to be able to shift to cover presence gaps in the Arabian Gulf, but with the instability in the Balkans, this was not possible. With only 12 carrier battle groups, there were no other ways to provide coverage without significantly breaking personnel tempo or operational tempo. Fifteen carrier battle groups would provide for a deployed carrier to act as a swing presence, to fill gaps that result from unanticipated requirements. We then would have consistent presence in the three major theaters—the Mediterranean, the Arabian Gulf, and the Western Pacific.
We think that 12 amphibious ready groups is about right. However, we do foresee a serious recapitalization effort and a modernization issue to ensure that we can support V-22—opposite, landing—implementation.
Clearly, 50 submarines are insufficient to meet our subsurface requirements. The post-Cold War demand for submarines is growing rather than shrinking as many expected. And the number of intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, strike, and "special" projects will continue to increase. Of the three peacetime tasking priorities for submarines, 50 submarines generally will support only the first priority level of taskings. What we have realized is that, at minimum, 68 fast attack submarines are required to perform all the missions demanded of them today and into the foreseeable future.
There are other issues that bear deeper consideration. For example, the QDR's 116 surface combatants metric presumed Aegis capability for every one of those ships. Fiscal constraints recently have committed us to extend non-Aegis ships in service. For example, frigates will have service life beyond 2010, and in 2008 will comprise about 20% of the surface combatant inventory. The issue is not numbers; it is capability.
Surface combatant force structure decisions also are complicated by issues relative to new roles and missions: the emerging theater ballistic missile defense requirement, increased use of strike assets, and the evolving near-shore operational focus for DD-21. The new requirement for both a Navy Area Defense capability in the endo-atmosphere and the Navy Theater Wide capability in the exo-atmosphere is driving the modification of a significant percentage of our surface combatants. These new missions may draw important force structure assets away from their traditional support role in the battle group. The increasing focus on the land attack mission and the naval surface fires support aspect of the DD-21 may dictate that it operate in close proximity to amphibious forces. In addition, we continually are stretched to meet the increasing demand for our strike assets.
One area that may provide us additional strike capability is the Trident submarine conversions. To leverage our cruisers and destroyers for other missions, we are looking at converting four ballistic missile submarines to guided-missile submarines (SSGNs). An SSGN would provide theater commanders-in-chief a strong strike capability and more options to meet national security taskings. A first salvo from an SSGN would be equivalent to that of three to four ships or five to six attack submarines. Its presence in theater would bring significant flexibility to the theater commander for strike missions and balance with the potential future demand of the Navy Area Defense and Theater Wide missions.
To sustain the kind of presence our national security strategy dictates, and to meet these emerging missions, it will be necessary to maintain a force closer to 135-145 surface combatants. This will provide sufficient presence, theater ballistic missile defense, and support to the battle group. To meet the Combat Logistics Force (CLF) requirement for surface forces, we also need to sustain 30-35 CLF ships. It no longer is about the budget and what we can afford. It is about what capabilities—including force structure numbers, weapon systems, communications capability, ordnance, and people—we will need to continue to meet peacetime presence requirements and wartime contingencies.
Right now, our people are bridging the gap for us between what we are capable of and what is required of us—working harder and longer, and getting by with fewer resources and less support. In an all-volunteer force, the weight of this challenge is reflected in our difficulty retaining and recruiting. Our focus must be on easing the burden on our people even while we flex to meet ever-increasing taskings. If this is our future, if requirements remain the same (or increase) while assets continue to dwindle, we must figure out a way to operate in this environment on a routine basis. There are no easy answers, but we can apply what we have learned from our past so that we don't make the same mistakes in the future.
The world is, and always has been, a dangerous and chaotic place. For our own survival and the interests of humanity, in the words of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, "We must make certain now and for the future, that the peace is secure. We must remain strong. Never again should we risk the threat which weakness invites. We owe this to the men who have fought and to the youngsters who are growing up today." We owe this to ourselves, our nation, and those throughout the world who depend on the United States to keep the peace and ensure prosperity.
Admiral Clemins is Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet.