Recent assessments of the future security environment envision many types, intensities, and durations of conflicts that the United States may be a party to at some point. Many of those can be described as being “brushfires,” with the level of U.S. commitment to their resolution being highly dependent on public sentiment. In contemporary language, such campaigns are termed “wars of choice”—generally by those who rarely see the absolute necessity for U.S. intervention in overseas hostilities of any kind. “Wars of necessity,” in contrast, are portrayed as national do-or-die affairs, ideally waged solely to confront an implacable enemy on the march to world domination.
Whether or not such distinctions are valid, or even useful, is academic. Given America’s 20th-century experience, it is irresponsible to assume away future U.S. participation in major conflict. Regardless of the root cause or justification, fighting and winning a war requires the maintenance of land, sea, and air combat power, including significant joint forcible-entry capability and capacity.
Critics of joint forcible-entry operations—and of amphibious assaults in particular—often base their arguments on the infrequency of their use since World War II. If that is the ultimate standard or worth, the logic of the argument can be applied to a wide range of capabilities. The United States has not used nuclear weapons in war for 65 years, yet it has invested untold billions of dollars in their development and deployment since 1945. A U.S. submarine has not torpedoed a ship or sub of another country in 50 years, yet the nation has spent enormous sums of money on that capability.
The Aegis combat system, deployed on more than 80 warships at a cost of billions of dollars, has not been used in combat to do what it was designed for: fleet defense against much-feared saturation air and missile attacks. The United States has never flown its third- and fourth-generation fighters in combat against the primary adversary they were designed to battle. All of those weapons—except for nuclear arms—originally were justified in terms of being prepared to fight and win a major war against the Soviet Union. All but nuclear weapons have proved their utility against lesser threats; given the emerging security environment, it is imprudent to suggest that none will be used to significant effect in future conflicts.
Marines believe that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ desire for U.S. forces to have broad utility across the range of operations (rather than fielding “exquisite” capabilities oriented on just a few tasks) to be a particularly strong endorsement of warriors trained for forcible-entry operations from the sea. Because much of the world’s population lives within a few hundred miles of oceans or major waterways, and because U.S. access to the fixed overseas bases that underpinned our defense strategy for 60 years has declined, there is a very high probability that the United States will need amphibious-assault capabilities at some point in the future. Unless and until the President and the Congress take major wars off the table, the Marine Corps and the Army are obliged to consider and prepare for an array of wars that—as wars are wont to do—start with a surprise attack and defeat of U.S. or allied forces or otherwise expand beyond the “box” that policymakers envisioned.
When Strategies Work, And When They Don’t
Of the many responsibilities shared between America’s elected leaders and their senior civilian and military appointees, strategy development and strategic planning are among the most important. It is a great challenge to accurately assess one’s national strengths, weaknesses, and potential; to accurately measure those of one’s rivals; and to develop, execute, sustain—and when required, alter—grand strategy in ways that consistently protect the nation and advance its interests. Meeting that challenge is the duty of the National Security Council and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, whose personnel are directly supported by thousands more on service and joint staffs and in defense-oriented think tanks.
Fortunately, America’s Cold War leaders, while confronting many serious challenges, never had to wage a direct military conflict with a near-peer competitor or alliance, in which the fate of the West hinged on the success of a single, or even several high-risk, high-payoff military operations such as Overlord in France in 1944. That is a remarkable record, and opinions of how it came to pass are varied. The majority suggests it is due to a combination of sound strategy development on America’s part and a strong disinclination on our primary adversary’s part to pursue its strategy through major armed conflict. Whether that is as a result of an innate conservatism on the part of the Soviet Union or its perception that it was in a greatly inferior position vis-à-vis the West, neither Soviet leaders nor those in the West saw major war as the best or even the only option to achieve their desired strategic end states. That distinction clearly sets the postwar period apart from the 1930s. It is difficult to imagine a set of national strategies and actions on the part of the economically and politically weakened West that would have prevented Adolf Hitler’s accession in Germany, curbed his ambition, or arrested his march toward a cataclysmic war.
While the United States’ grand strategy properly matched the nation’s ends, ways, and means during the Cold War, it did not often correctly predict or assess the many other circumstances under which America would wage and terminate war. That era’s history of military strategic planning and threat assessment—for less than existential threats—should not engender confidence in our current efforts at divining the future. As a rule, the United States either didn’t see a local or regional conflict coming (Korea in 1950, Kuwait in 1990, Afghanistan in 2001) or saw it coming (Vietnam in 1964, Iraq in 2003) but seriously underestimated the cost of attaining victory.
The Perils of Scenario Development
In spite of that poor record, the current strategic-planning community carries on with assurance, war-gaming adversaries in carefully scripted scenarios. Scenario adversaries, although dutifully credited with asymmetric capabilities, rarely achieve a level of effect (through sabotage, infliction of mass casualties, smart tactics, unexpected resistance, or sheer luck) that significantly impedes an ideal joint campaign, let alone taking the United States completely off its game plan. With most scenarios being essentially defensive in nature—such as the rapid reinforcement of a treaty ally, often with reliable allies (and their big airfields) in close proximity—that means, among other things, that the United States rarely is forced by circumstance to undertake a significant campaign to recover from a major loss, or to re-establish a friendly government.
Since the end of the Cold War, defense scenarios have been shaped and vetted in ways that effectively exclude from discussion any that are politically undesirable or that do not feature neat, discrete, or brief conflicts. Therein lies the rub: Our “grand” military strategists generally do not think in terms of big wars, nor do they even consider small wars that get big as they spiral out of control. They think, rather, in terms of carefully controlled campaigns with well-defined end states. Air and sea dominance are virtually assured in short order, and thus the possibility of losing a key region, state, city, or objective to an enemy is rarely considered, let alone the means required to retake it. The requirement to expand military capability and capacity significantly in time of major war—a fundamental responsibility of government—is largely ignored in the process.
Considering the great resources of the defense bureaucracy, it studies a strikingly narrow range of joint campaigns. In truth, it focuses on a just a few types of futuristic operational capabilities. At the policy level, since before September 2001 wholesale operational capability sets effectively were declared passé—mechanized and amphibious corps, in particular—while long-range manned and unmanned systems, joined more recently by special operations forces, have been promoted as arms of decision. In spite of a lack of attention at the top toward major war, military planners continue to consider that unfortunate possibility, at least in the abstract. Congress continues to hold the armed services responsible for maintaining the ultimate sinews of war, and their staffs and schools still have the wherewithal to study the art and science of major war.
Today’s joint headquarters are so well resourced that they command agendas and effectively minimize “off the reservation” work. Solutions must be “born joint” to gain bureaucratic traction, and that form of creeping socialism can dampen initiatives, concepts, and ideas that run counter to those promoted by policy. Worse yet, it can promote and extend past-their-prime initiatives whose natural lives would be long past to a staff not in the business of handing out yearly study contracts.
Assessing Threats and Capabilities
For military planners confronting the future strategic environment, the most pertinent questions to be addressed are those dealing with:
• The nature of the threat in each type of environment
• The strategic capabilities required to meet the challenges of the more dangerous or probable of the threats
• The aggregate required capacity of each type required to deter, delay, defend or overcome some combination of threats.
The Marine Corps foresees three operational-capability requirements that can be logically derived both from recent national and defense-strategy documents and from traditional American approaches to foreign challengers.
Presence and Cooperation: Events outside of Southwest Asia will substantially influence our strategic interests in the future. Among the most plausible are the failures of key post-colonial states. When considering the future strategic environment, two things become clear: First, that the “contested” or crisis zones of failed, failing, challenged or outright hostile states constitute a significant portion of the globe. Second, that the majority of these zones are either adjacent to or readily accessible from the sea. If it is decided as a matter of national strategy to engage with governments and entities in these zones, the strength and versatility of U.S. naval power provides an excellent array of means with which to do so.
One of the key lessons of the current war is the value of developing, maintaining and sustaining regular military-to-military relationships with partner and potential-partner militaries. Whether through the occasional presence of Amphibious Ready Groups or through the persistent presence afforded by global fleet stations, embarked Marine Air-Ground Task Forces (MAGTFs) offer Combatant Commands the opportunity to scale engagement opportunities to fit local and regional conditions and sentiments. Paired with amphibious, logistics and littoral combat ships just offshore or over the horizon, MAGTFs can undertake a range of actions, from training with local forces to providing security to Fleet assets to assisting in maritime interception operations.
Crisis Response: Building on the persistent and widespread efforts of security-cooperation activities, embarked MAGTFs are among the most appropriate military capability sets to turn to in time of crisis. They are a historically proven force for good, whether responding to natural disasters or answering calls for humanitarian relief in strife-torn regions. When conflict threatens the safety of American citizens and third-country nationals, naval forces featuring embarked MAGTFs traditionally have been at the forefront of noncombatant evacuation operations—most recently demonstrated in Lebanon in 2006. Even when few U.S. interests are directly at risk, MAGTFs often have been the response force of choice. They have participated in dozens of operations in the past two decades, and there appears to be no limit on the demand for crisis-response forces in the future.
Major Combat/Sustained Warfare: The steady improvement in U.S. long-range precision-strike and enhanced technological/intelligence capabilities, has led defense planners and analysts to equate greater precision and lethality with short, intense wars of the type the United States fought in and around Kuwait in 1991 and wanted to fight in Iraq in 2003. But if anything, the past few years have shown that precision strike does not—by itself—decide any war. Rather, it is one of many capabilities that gives U.S. forces—generally small, but well trained and equipped—a big advantage on most battlefields. Given the time and inclination, an enemy will work to erode such advantages, and in that regard care must be taken to guard against any form of complacency.
The experience of the United States and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan shows that traditional land forces—skilled in tactical maneuver and equipped with effective direct-fire weapons and fire-support coordination systems—remain an irreplaceable component of any war, campaign, or operation that is fought for core national interests. Without such land forces, it is nearly impossible to control terrain and populations, and without that kind of control it is impossible to fundamentally change any underlying political dynamic that is at the root of conflict.
Forcible-Entry Capability Is Crucial
Marine Corps operating forces are designed to accomplish specified functions per Title 10 U.S. Code. The most prominent function is “to provide Fleet Marine Forces of combined arms, together with supporting aviation forces, for service with the fleet in the seizure and defense of advanced naval bases. . . .” The demands of amphibious operations drive the organization, equipping, and training of its forces, and dictate a bottom-up approach that favors the use of combined arms at the lowest levels of combat. Many innovative tactics, techniques, procedures, and equipment have been introduced or brought to maturity by Marines in the nearly 80-year effort to perfect amphibious operations, and they will continue to contribute unique capabilities to the nation’s joint forcible entry arsenal in the decades to come.
Given the continuing likelihood of mid- to high-intensity conflict, it seems inconceivable that the United States would not need a strategically relevant capacity for forcible entry from the sea. There are simply too many areas of the world where such a capability may be required, either to arrest an enemy’s assault or to retake a key campaign objective lost to the enemy before U.S. power could be brought to bear. Marine expeditionary forces, modernized with transformational capabilities long under development, remain a key component of a joint force when rapid response and lean, effective combat power are in demand.
A secondary function of the Marine Corps is to contribute to sustained operations on land, and thus it must be sufficiently compatible with the U.S. Army for its forces to be able to fight effectively as partners. As evidenced by recent campaigns, Marine expeditionary forces are well-suited to sustained war employment when augmented with modest irregular-warfare capabilities. Secretary Gates’ call for a balance between regular and irregular-warfare capabilities is thus music to the ears of Marines, because in it they hear validation of the Corps’ force-development decisions of the past two decades. Very few Marine programs are single-purpose, while many are designed for optimal performance in the “most dangerous” operational or tactical employment scenarios. The distinction between the two is important. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once quipped that “you go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want.” In the case of the Marine Corps, Presidents and senior officials want first and foremost to be certain that it remains a fighting force that can successfully execute the tough missions. The Marine Corps they want is called insurance.
In an era when there could be virtually no U.S. frontline units, the nation by preference will rely on air power to blunt enemy actions in conflicts, but air power is simply one part of a complex military equation. Forces that can seize and hold key areas are another part of the equation, but they can have no effect on the battlefield unless they can be brought to bear. Forcible-entry units are the only joint capabilities that provide the President that option, however distasteful they may be to those who believe such operations are too risky. The facts support the need for traditional Navy and Marine Corps amphibious-assault capabilities. Unfortunately, declining amphibious-ship capacity is steadily sapping that strength. Without appropriate amphibious lift and sea basing, the Navy–Marine Corps team—and, more important, the United States—is unnecessarily constrained in its ability to engage and respond globally.
Let’s Get Back To Basics
It is axiomatic that in the post-Iraq/Afghanistan era the United States will act much as it did in the wake of Vietnam—having little appetite for extensive involvement in warfare ashore, be it of the conventional or irregular type. Even assuming that reluctance to be fact, the United States will not completely withdraw from regions in crisis. Although proponents of air and space power will be quick to trumpet the theoretical advantages of intelligence and strike operations from “strategic” distances, the future environment does not appear to lend itself to an offshore strategy of strikes and raids.
Fortunately, a time-proven benefit of highly efficient forcible entry—both amphibious and airborne—is that it has a wide degree of applicability to tasks across the range of military operations. The desire to act decisively while limiting exposure will drive the United States toward a sea-based posture. Only aggressively forward-deployed or based naval forces have provided the foundation from which military operations have been executed—ranging from the light touch of security cooperation in humanitarian aid/disaster relief or small-contingency responses, to the hammer of sustained major combat operations.
Given that history and a presumption that what’s past is prologue, the Marine Corps has little recourse but to argue the merits of shifting the Navy’s investment strategy from “sensors and shooters” toward proven littoral capabilities that can deliver the widest range of military operations in a sustainable and economical manner. In essence, the United States must return to the classic, time-honored truths that served it well as the world’s preeminent power of the past century:
• That there is no effective substitute for being persistently “on station” in crisis-prone regions of the world with ready, responsive, and flexible intervention forces
• That naval forces are exceptionally well suited to safeguard the nation’s interests, given their sovereign status, their inherent right of self-defense, their extraordinary operational mobility, and their ability to linger at length
• That Marine Air-Ground Task Forces—and the amphibious ships and other supporting naval units that enable them to operate and be employed decisively in the littorals—are prudent, cost-effective, and responsible national investments.