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One of the things that we’ve learned in the past decade is that failed and failing states are probably the single greatest threat to America. They too often become breeding grounds for terrorists and radical extremists.
The corollary of this, of course, is that there is no substitute for American boots on the ground. The stabilizing presence of an American soldier or Marine has no parallel and cannot be replaced by any ship, missile or airplane.
For these reasons, our most urgent military challenge is to maintain a robust ground force that can be rapidly deployed, even to distant and austere regions, for long and indefinite durations.
We may never have to do another Iraq or Afghanistan — but then again, we might. And, if we are unprepared for a prolonged ground engagement, then the likelihood of its occurring will escalate.
Yet, policymakers across the political divide — both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives — are preparing to gut the size of America’s ground force.
“We know that the military of the 21st century will be smaller,” says Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
The Pentagon chief implies “that the force structure cuts would fall most heavily on the Army,” reports Lexington Institute analyst Dan Goure.
He specifically mentioned the size of the ground forces in addressing the subject of future force structure. He suggested an expanded role for the National Guard and Reserve to respond to a crisis — which I would interpret as the second war.
The only way to meet the range of missions defined by the secretary, to be globally deployed, agile, responsive and extremely potent, is to focus the 21st century military on air and sea-based capabilities. Modern air and sea-based forces provide the presence, flexibility and sheer combat power the U.S. will most require in the 21st century.
To the list Panetta provided I would add missile defenses, long-range strike and anti-submarine warfare which are also areas of U.S. technological and operational advantage.
Now, it is important that the United States have an air force and a navy that are second to none. Power projection capabilities are, indeed, crucial, as is missile defense.
But with all due respect to Goure and the Washington cognoscenti, missiles, ships and aircraft don’t win wars; soldiers and Marines do. And the truth is that our ground forces are already undermanned and underfunded.
Which is why we have had great difficulty sustaining our deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Too many soldiers and Marines, consequently, have had to do multiple deployments for as long as 15 months at a stretch. Further reducing the size of our ground forces is a surefire recipe for tying the hands of future commanders-in-chief and severely limiting their military options.
Effete policymakers love to wage war from a distance with technology and machines. But if our long twilight struggle with Islamic terrorism has taught us anything, it is that technology and machines are, in and of themselves, grossly inadequate for the challenges that we now face. War is a fundamentally human endeavor; and that remains as true today as it was 100 or 1,000 years ago.
By all means, let us better utilize and employ the National Guard and Reserve. They are a crucial part of the American military. But don’t shortchange our active-duty ground forces. They’re more important today than they were during the Cold War; and their deployments are a long ways from being finished.
John Guardiano blogs at www.ResCon1.com, and you can follow him on Twitter: @JohnRGuardiano.
Libya would seem to illustrate that there is a jolly good alternative to American boots on the ground.
“Effete policymakers love to wage war from a distance with technology and machines.”
Having done a blood/treasure/national interest calculation, I’ll take the results the “effete” got in Libya over the results the “macho” got in Iraq any day.
Yeah, but in Libya we “led from behind”, so it’s no good for chest-thumping by old men or dramatic carrier landings by once-AWOL chicken hawks. Don’t you know that our strategy in Libya just proves that Obama hates America?
Who needs boots on the ground, it works so well in Yeman and Pakistan.
Pay their army for intelligence and a few guns for hire, then use the drones to kill a couple of American citizens and AK’s finest. No embarassing Abu Ghraib or blue-on-blue ex-NFL incidents.
“We may never have to do another Iraq or Afghanistan — but then again, we might.”
I hope we’re smart enough to realize that we don’t have to do another one.
Keep Ground Forces a Defense Priority // Oct 13, 2011 at 11:55 am
[...] as FrumForum. [...]
Guardiano’s approach to military spending reminds me of an old Cross Country coach, who told his runners:
“Go out fast, pick it up in the middle, and bring it in with a great kick”.
There is nothing (except for retirement benefits, perhaps) that Guardiano would ever not perpetually increase. An ideal Guardiano growth curve for military spending would have it take up about 80% of the US budget in a decade or so.
I might take him seriously, if he advocated for higher taxes to pay for his perpetual military spending spree. Of course, that ain’t happening, ever.
I think it was Sebastian Coe who when asked for his secret for winning races, said “I begin at a brisk pace and run at ever-increasing speed”.
Didn’t we learn anything from Vietnam?
Or Iraq?
Or Afghanistan?
Obviously Mr. Guardiano didn’t.
Our consistent experience in those adventures has been that indigenous people don’t take kindly to having their lands occupied by foreign (American) troops.
How did any of those adventures make us any safer from “the terrorists”?
Didn’t someone tell Guardiano that we didn’t learn anything from Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, so we could learn it all from Iran?
Yes. We learned we didn’t spend enough money on the military. When we lose boots on the ground campaigns, the answer is more money for technology. When we win with technology, we need more money for boots on the ground since we can’t let ‘effete policymakers’ fall in love with technology. Win or lose, the lesson is the same.
“missiles, ships and aircraft don’t win wars; soldiers and Marines do. And the truth is that our ground forces are already undermanned and underfunded.”
Really? So England having the finest Navy in all of Europe had nothing to do with their success? The ability to dominate the air had nothing to do with ours? The ability to attack from a farther distance away doesn’t make a crucial difference? Ever hear of Agincourt?
If we need to fight another ground war and need substantially more forces, then there is a very simple answer. A draft. As the mother of a son, this is not my most favorite option but shouldn’t stick to wars where the necessity of this is obvious? Minimally skilled soldiers are the easiest thing to ramp up. Highly skilled soldiers are the hardest, yet Mr. Guardiano doesn’t suggest getting rid of expensive contractors who steal our best soldiers.
+1
+2
A draft? Great point, Primrose.
First, draftees used to do a lot of the work that expensive contractors do now. Like provide security. Cheaper isn’t always better, but the way that contractors have been getting rich on our recent wars is a disgrace.
Second, and most important: there has been a noticeable trend in the past decade for those government officials most in favor of committing American ground troops to conflicts in faraway places being the ones who declined to serve in combat when their opportunities arose. In Afghanistan and Iraq in particular, the entire burden of combat has been borne by a relatively few volunteers (some of them reluctant – Guard and Reserve, for example). The rest of us have experienced no hardship whatsoever and were asked to sacrifice nothing. Not even to pay the bills.
A universal draft would put some skin in the game from the privileged whose kids are presently exempt from the consequences of their enthusiasm for war.
Well, I don’t think we should be fighting any more extensive ground wars that are not so crucial that a draft was reasonable. Ground wars are by their nature costly, intractable and hard to truly win. They are also really, really foolish wars to enter into with an asymmetric opponent. You win the battle and lose the PR for decades.
We could of course crush the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan but not in anyway that would result in our becoming a pariah nation at least in living memory, and since grudges are generational in the Middle East, much, much longer. So we don’t, so we are left in some kind of odd stalemate – that still harms our PR and the perception of our power.
Machiavelli said kill a man or caress him but anything im between only breeds resentment.
Thus, we shouldn’t be doing them (extensive ground wars) unless our backs are against the wall. And I’m sorry but the current climate of terrorism is unpleasant and must be dealt with but it is not that level of an existential threat.
Small teams with good communication and good technology that can target small groups like Al-Queda are much more effective, with less blowback and more effective psychological deterrent.
The future of warfare is very clearly going to be divided into asymmetric war and cyberwar. China is no more going to initiate an old-fashioned ground war than I am. They will, however, mess completely with our technology.
As for contractors, it is just plain dumb to permit, let alone fund, private armies with no accountability and no national loyalty. XE (the former Blackwater) could easily switch from helping us to helping our enemies, or helping a multi-national corporation unmoored from a nation state.
I agree. But I have come to believe that our fiasco in Iraq would not have occurred if Bush had been forced to raise an army of draftees, with his own offspring (and those of Congressional hawks) in the draft pool.
Granted.
A major problem today is our *professional* military. It has the appearance of an Army of (by) God. Gen Boykin and the Air Force Academy comes immediately to mind along w/ all the proselytizing the Christians force upon the lower ranks.
Less than 3% of the population has any direct experience w/ the military. Consequently wearing lapel pins, singing the national anthem and saying the pledge become indicators of patriotism. This is in lieu of really examining the wars. Who but the smallest minority feel the pain.
Lastly, large numbers will increase the scrutiny of all. During WW2, FDR, Marshall and Eisenhower all were very concerned about the lenth of the war pushing 4 years. Today, we’re at 10 and counting.
When I got out after the Vietnam war and finished my education, my first job was given to me by a Korean Vet Now that’s brotherhood. This is much less possible today because 1. there are less vets; 2. they’re either injured, sick or hospitalized or the re-up because they’ve no place to go.
You mean that putting a yellow ribbon magnet on the back of my car that says “support the troops” isn’t enough?
A draft seems an involuntary servitude where young men are yoked to fight wars declared by old men. A young person’s life belongs to them … not the government. IMO
AMENDMENT XIII
Section 1.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
In case you didn’t get this headline:
Supreme Court rules that the draft is constitutional – Selective Draft Law Cases., 38 S. Ct. 159, 245 U.S. 366 (1918)
@ Primrose regarding the draft.
I would also propose that all politician’s children have a requirement that their number comes up first for frontline duty – unless they announce they are gay, in which case they get a deferrment.
Wonder how many sons and daughters of GOP conservatives would suddenly be in favor of an alternative lifestyle?
+3
I love this post.
What’s with the Agincourt reference.
A battle from 1415 that took place in France featuring a trapped English king facing a French army 3-4 times larger than his. The long bow still needs men on the ground only a couple of hundred meters from from the enemy and the sea was much more difficult to dominate
Also, this battle did nothing to settle the overall strategic balance and was merely a mid-point of the Hundred Years War. Can you imagine Iraq/Afganistan/North Pakistan rolling on for another 90 years.
Agincourt is an historically important battle. People, at least in the West, who claim to know enough about military matters to advise on it, should have heard of it. It was not the “men on the ground” that won the battle, as there were considerably more men on the ground on the French side. It was the technology. This has always been one of the lessons of Agincourt. Mr. Guardiano made a patently false claim. I cited historical examples against it.
As I’ve said in other posts, it is one thing to be a hawk, it is another to be an ignorant one. Military planning is a precise and disciplined field, with clear lessons and rules. While creativity and genius matter, any who aspire to greatness take the time to learn from the past.
Now for a bit of fact check:
The 100 years war, not really a 100 years, and not really a single war, but (to super condense wikipedia here) a series of conflicts commonly divided into three or four phases. Several other contemporary European conflicts were directly related to this conflict. The term “Hundred Years’ War” was a later term invented by historians to describe the series of events.
As to the importance of Agincourt, I’ll cut and paste directly from wikipedia here:
Although the victory had been militarily decisive, its impact was complex. It did not lead to further English conquests immediately as Henry’s priority was to return to England, which he did on 16 November, to be received in triumph in London on the 23rd.[55] Henry returned a conquering hero, in the eyes of his subjects and European powers outside of France, blessed by God. It established the legitimacy of the Lancastrian monarchy and the future campaigns of Henry to pursue his “rights and privileges” in France.[56] Other benefits to the English were longer term. Very quickly after the battle, the fragile truce between the Armagnac and Burgundian factions broke down. The brunt of the battle had fallen on the Armagnacs and it was they who suffered the majority of senior casualties and carried the blame for the defeat. The Burgundians seized on the opportunity and within 10 days of the battle had mustered their armies and marched on Paris.[57] This lack of unity in France would allow Henry eighteen months to prepare militarily and politically for a renewed campaign. When that campaign took place, it was made easier by the damage done to the political and military structures of Normandy by the battle.[58]
It took several years’ more campaigning, but Henry was eventually able to fulfil all his objectives. He was recognised by the French in the Treaty of Troyes (1420) as the regent and heir to the French throne. This was cemented by his marriage to Catherine of Valois, the daughter of King Charles VI.
Fulfilling all our objectives? You wouldn’t be satisfied with that?
I have no doubt that just like with Vietnam we ended up in Iraq a few decades later that we will again in time wind up with another Vietnam \ Iraq somewhere else as we forget the lessons of the past…
And it will be again a complete waste of American lives, money and prestige…
How about this – if we really cared about the American ground troops – we actually only use them when it is for national defense instead of for allowing a President and Congress to puff up its collective chests and talk all tough while then pushing others out to do the fighting…
First, I agree with the author that the size of infantry is important. I don’t think we are about to suffer a military collapse, but shrinking the manpower is how it happens to empires. You get better and better equipment, but less of it. You are more powerful but more fragile.
The Byzantine army was amazing and won almost every battle, but when the army lost and was destroyed it took a year before they could field another army, and in that time their enemies could pillage and conquer to the walls of Constantinople.
The U.S. military may not be defeated, but it is certainly tied down in places. We do police the world and will continue to do so until there is a viable alternative. Being able to win in one place is not enough, we have to be able to win in lots of places.
That said, there is little to no evidence to support the claim “The stabilizing presence of an American soldier or Marine has no parallel and cannot be replaced by any ship, missile or airplane.” Iraq demonstrated that our troops on the ground caused the instability. They were the targets and reason for much of the fighting. Whereas ships, missiles, and airplanes won the victory in Libya – although there were NATO boots on the ground, but not very many.
We need a large army to defend and hold America’s interests. But there is no reason to think that most interventions need or would even benefit from boots on the ground.
Iraq boots on the ground= 4478 US military killed, unrest and insurgence on a massive scale. Huge costs approaching a Trillion and a half.
Libya no boots on the ground= 0 (zero) US military killed, no insurgence at all. Small costs in the billion or so range.
Guardiano’s lesson learned, we need more boots on the ground.
Total idiocy on a stick with chocolate sauce.
The boosters of the US as global military superpower and world cop never seem to bother to spell out exactly how this makes us safer. The evidence of the last 15 years is pretty clearly that it doesn’t. We did ourselves and the world no favors by invading Iraq on false premises. We’ve accomplished nothing of lasting value in Afghanistan. And if we didn’t have giant military bases scattered all across the mideast and asia, there would be that much less polemical material for disaffected radicals to latch onto and point at as evidence of our imperialilstic ambitions. No giant navy requiring countless refueling stops, no Cole bombing. etc.
Instead of spending $700 billion / year on global military adventurism, imagine what that sum could do at home, or spent on doing good elsewhere in the world. JFK is a revered figure across Africa and Asia thanks to the peace corps. Its budget for 2011 is $400 million – barely 1/2 of 1% of what we’re spending on the military, and only slightly more than our spending for military bands.
There is no long term future for the US without a gigantic realignment of priorities towards spending that actually builds our economy – on education, infrastructure, clean energy and so on – and away from the sinkhole of a globally extended war machine.
That’s right. Gotta’ maintain a force that is capable of 3-5 democratization missions at any given time.
“One of the things that we’ve learned in the past decade is that failed and failing states are probably the single greatest threat to America. They too often become breeding grounds for terrorists and radical extremists.”
I think the UN lists around 25-30 failed or failing states. Which ones are we going to invade first Guardiano? The “boots on the ground” strategy is responsible for the three major (Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq) and several minor (eg. Lebanon) military debacles this country has been involved in since WW 2. What HAS Guardiano got between the ears? I don’t have a problem with arguing for a properly balanced defense force but basing this on the need to invade countries is unbalanced, not to mention un American.
Exactly Otto. Our single biggest threat according to Mr. Guardiano is exactly where we don’t want boots on the ground.
Yes, but what if we have to invade countries to impound and confiscate their crude oil so we will have enough fuel to get back home?
oh lord, while I don’t deny that outside force can be stabilizing, the evidence is getting strong that it ain’t American. In the Ivory Coast the French and UN forces got rid of Gbagbo without the aid of a single American boot. And of course we have the great success of Libya, wherein we used (or in a sense were used by) proxies to overthrow Gaddhafi, a psychopathic mass murderer who slaughtered Americans under Reagans watch and his response was to…well, not do much.
Guardiano seems to have no understanding of history, one of the reasons why the Islamists in Iran have held on for so long is because they use us a bogeyman, bringing up the 1950′s and the Shah. We screwed up then, we don’t have to keep screwing up now.
The trick is to get others to do what you want them to do and if you get involved do it in such a way that you seem to be being dragged in, no one in the Arab world has protested US involvement in Libya. Not one American died.
How is it that Guardiano has not even heard of the Libyan war, or the our war in Kosovo and Bosnia, two other countries where we achieved great success without US boots on the ground.
Modern Democrats win wars because they learned from their mistakes. Guardiano is of the logic that he (Republicans) never makes mistakes, things just took an unfortunate turn for the worst that had nothing whatsoever to do with their administration
They didn’t just make mistakes Frumple. They ignored centuries, heck even millenium of solid military wisdom. Everything that has ever been known about how to win a war and they ignored it. In case you haven’t noticed this really annoys me. I can understand them being more willing to go to war than I am, but if you are so hot and heavy for the subject, then learn it.
“One of the things that we’ve learned in the past decade is that failed and failing states are probably the single greatest threat to America.”
Oh oh. I bet the farm that the American/global economies and Ole Man Peak Oil were the single greatest threats to America.
Anybody want to sell me a CDS on that?
It would save more money and more lives if you preferred that we’re not lied into any more unnecessary wars. But I have the feeling the author probably thought Iraq was a swell idea when the flag-wavers and chest-beaters were calling everyone else “unpatriotic”.
Most observers would regard the presence of a huge standing army in Iraq and Afghanistan as a significant problem since it a) costs a lot of money, b) U.S. casualties have a significant political downside at home and c) the Muslim world generally does not approve of the presence of American troops.
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Most conflicts in the post-Cold War era (from the 1991 invasion of Iraq to Libya’2011) were in fact resolved fairly easily thanks to excellent power projection by the US Air Force and Navy. As for boots on the ground, perhaps an American version of the “French foreign legion” or the Gurkhas would make more sense? Recruiting, training and equipping a similar peacekeeping force would surely be cheaper, no?
MARCU$
As a long time Reservist, now retired, I feel the need to add that we need laws to protect deployed troops from losing their jobs, home, child custody, credit rating and everything else. They put their lives on hold, everyone else does too. And create laws with shark teeth. Any bill collector who tries to collect from them, or banker who tries to foreclose on them while they’re deployed goes to prison for a very long time. Any legal professional who takes legal action loses his license. Whatever issue you need to resolve can wait till they get back. Any employer who penalizes them loses his business.
I couldn’t agree more. I found it shocking to learn that there is a higher unemployment rate for soldiers than civilians because employers are discriminating against those in service. In some cases could an soldier be more difficult to transition into civilian life, I suppose, but to me that is irrelevant.
If I didn’t have to go risk my life, be put in such a horrible situation etc. then I can damn well be put to the inconvenience of his or her transition back into civil society. Not only that but I should do it gladly!
Bravo for you, my friend Steve.
As usual, Guardiano is spectacularly wrong, and on so many levels.
First of all, a large standing army is an invitation for intervening everywhere. The country can ill-afford yet another stupid attempt to remake the world in our image with large ground forces.
Second, the whole “breeding ground for terrorists” line is just a myth. Islam is the breeding ground of Islamic Supremacism, of which the hard-core jihadists are a small percentage. What, John, are we going after all 2 billion of them? How big an Army would that take?
Furthermore, 9/11 was planned mostly in Hamburg and the hijackers were mostly privileged or middle class Saudis.
The only potential failed state that we need to worry about is Mexico, and we have more than enough domestic Army and National Guard troops to defend the U.S. if that escalates.
But large ground forces are expensive, and one of the least effective ways of fighting terrorists. Large ground forces are slow to train, deploy, and support. Typically it takes months to get a decent-sized ground force together. It took six months just to get two full Corps plus a Marine Division on the ground in Desert Storm. Predators or throat-slitters in the middle of the night are better ways of dealing with hard-core jihadists.
We are finished with stupid American Empire projects and the large ground forces that they require at least until we get our fiscal house in order, and hopefully forever.
For once I agree with you 100%.
^+1 Arms Merchant
Guardiano is usually wrong when it comes to military affairs. The real Tea jihadists are here in our midst. Maybe we should ship them out for foreign mis-adventures.
OMG Arms Boy. An intelligent and realistic assessment of strategic, logistic and tactical realities. I’m impressed.
When you have a hammer in your hand everything looks like a nail.
Well, I didn’t bother to look at Mr Guardiano’s latest until now when I’m behind a couple of Kentucky’s finest and the pillow beckons. I should have passed it by.
Astonishing. Someone is an editor for FForum on military matters who has never seen BlackHawk Down. What other explanation for “the stabilizing presence of an American soldier or Marine has no parallel…”
I happen to be one of 525,000 American uniformed military personnel who stabilized the Republic of VietNam. And had the occasion to take a long walk in bad weather with a company of Marines; no one says more wonderful things about the US Marine Corps than I — the lost and lonely Air Force PJ who they freighted along — do.
I agree that in very bad times there is no substitute for men with rifles. For those men, there is no substitute for effective air cover. In order to achieve that, there is no substitute for a Navy that can deliver both ordinance and supplies.
But the essence of political leadership is to keep that necessity from our door. Machiavelli is a good guide here.
And a PS: Ms Primrose has attained great heights of wisdom and thoughtfulness on this thread. My generation — and here I include myself — did away with the draft. This was a mistake. If Iraq and Afghanistan had required conscripted soldiers we would have “stabilized” them a long, long time ago and gone home. And Mr Guardiano would be citing them as great successes which prove whatever hobbyhorse he is riding today is the greatest of wise policies.
“One of the things that we’ve learned in the past decade is that failed and failing states are probably the single greatest threat to America.”
You’re right to note that 21st century security threats are very different from the threats we faced during the Cold War. Failing states, cyberwar, and nuclear terrorism are new threats, and they require different tools than conventional war and ground forces.
As a reliable Democratic vote I regularly read FrumForum to try and at least understand what sane GOP voices are arguing. If this post by Guardiano is indicative of mainstream GOP defense policy they need to go back to the drawing board. Has Guardiano been asleep for the past decade and a half? What a terrible prognosis.
Obama Deploys Troops and Cuts Their Funding // Oct 18, 2011 at 7:40 am
[...] week, at FrumForum, I wrote that ground forces must remain a defense priority. And, as if to prove my point, President [...]