By Carlo Muñoz, WSH TIMES
Pentagon war planners are shifting away from the George W. Bush and Obama-era strategies dominated by battling extremist groups such as al Qaeda, the Taliban and Islamic State, and setting their sights on the growing military threat posed by Russia, China and other nation states.
Defense Department and national security officials within the Trump administration outlined this doctrinal shift in its new National Security Strategy (NDS), released Friday. Defense Secretary James Mattis made the case for the administration’s divergence from extremist terror threats to those posed by global powers during a speech Friday in Washington.
“We face growing threats from revisionist powers as different as China and Russia. Nations that seek to create a world consistent with their authoritarian models,” Mr. Mattis said during his speech at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies.
Noting the development of the NDS required “tough choices” to be made by defense and national security leaders, Mr. Mattis said the end product “makes a clear-eyed appraisal of our security environment, with a keen eye on America’s place in the world.”
Those tough choices, he noted, were made “based on a fundamental precept: That America can afford survival.”
Specifically, the defense strategy contends Beijing though “military modernization, influence operations and predatory economics” is pursuing its own designs to replace the U.S. as the premier regional power in the Indo-Pacific region. China has already drawn the ire of Washington and its Pacific allies through its aggressive actions in the South China Sea and continued backing of the rogue regime in North Korea.
On Russia, Pentagon analysts suggest Moscow is seeking to “shatter [NATO]and change European and Middle East security and economic structures to its favor.” Russian influence campaign and shadow military operations in Ukraine and the Baltic states, its backing of government forces in Syria and cooperation with Iranian-backed militias in the country are widely seen as evidence of Moscow’s intentions.
Such claims simply represent Washington’s recognition “that China and Russia, in particular, have been assiduously working over a number of years to develop the military capabilities to challenge our military advantages,’ Elbridge Colby, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, told reporters Thursday at the Pentagon.
The release of the new Pentagon strategy was met with praise from defense analysts and international partners.
“The National Defense Strategy released today by Secretary Mattis is extraordinarily significant in a number of ways, and there is much to like in it,” retired Lt. Gen. Thomas Spoehr, director of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense, said in a statement Friday. “It is more candid and forthright in describing the potential adversaries the U.S. faces, as well as the current state of the U.S. military.”
UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson also welcomed the new outlook presented within the defense strategy, saying the “the document provides a useful lens and framework on which to focus joint and allied activities.”
The strategy’s “assessment of today’s geopolitical strategic landscape, the Ministry of Defence recognizes a familiar world view and the need to generate a whole-of-government response,” Mr. Williamson said, noting the Pentagonplan “strongly reaffirms the continued centrality of key Allies in preserving, maintaining and expanding a free and open international order.”
The renewed focus on nation-state adversaries will likely drive Pentagon investment toward more conventional weapon systems and programs like warships, fighter jets, tanks and heavy artillery, as opposed to unmanned drones and other systems closely associated with the war on terrorism.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said this week his forces needed to invest in the weapons and capabilities designed to fight “the big war” rather than the small, low-level conflicts that have characterized the post 9/11 era.
“We have to modernize ourselves against that type of capability” posed by nations like China and Russia, the four-star general said during an Association of the U.S. Army breakfast in Virginia.
“We need to pick our game up and pick our pace up and especially, in the United States and the United States Army. To do that … we need significant improvements” in conventional war-fighting skills and capabilities, he added.
But the call for more investment in traditional war-fighting capabilities in the new strategy is not loud enough, Gen. Spoehr said, noting the plan’s focus to deter major, nation-state adversaries while only curbing other threats such as terrorism “sets too low a strategic goal” for American and allied forces.
Back at the Pentagon, Mr. Colby was quick to point out the department’s renewed focus on conventional warfare did not mean U.S. military planners were abandoning its interests in containing extremist groups such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. The new strategy, however, will see the U.S. depend heavily on local, proxy forces to keep the peace in places like North Africa and the Middle East.
That said, department war planners will look to increase its military adviser efforts, which saw great success on the battlefields of Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, to ensure local security forces have the wherewithal to keep extremism in check, according to the new strategy.
“[We’ve] been dealing with the terrorism problem and the rogue state problem for a long time … but we really do need to focus on these very, very tough major power potential challenges,” Mr. Colby said.
@ yeshol:
Hello, Yeshol.
“The War on Terror” is an intentional misnomer; however the inappropriate word is not “war”, but “terror”. Terror is not an ideology; it is a tactical method — a LEGITIMATE tactical method (What serious military power does not want to terrorize its enemy? Show me one, and I will show you a race of idiots) — not an ideology.
The IDEOLOGY of our enemies, likewise is not terror: It is the obligation of every one of the 1.8 billion Muslims in the world, dictated by Qur’an, to physically fight its enemies (the non-Muslims) until Islam is the supreme world religion. This is an ideology built around the necessity of military action, like Communism; and the response must needs be military.
The reason the US needs to spend “trillions of dollars” every year on defense (Actually, it was $1,700 billion last year — close, but no cigar) is that we are, of necessity, the world’s policeman; and our military, uniquely among nations, must be stationed in, and continually prepared for contingencies in, the entire world.
If the US does not carry out this role, someone else will; and the most willing and able candidates for the job are the Russians and the Chinese. Would the world be a better place, if Putin were in charge? Do you really want to be under the thumb of a militaristic kleptocracy, run by one man and riddled through with corruption? Some do, but they are foolish.
Or would you really like to be controlled by the whims of Chinese Chairman Xi, another absolute dictatorship built around one man’s personality — a man who has specifically called for the persecution of religious minorities, and is famous for the arbitrary arrest and disappearance of political enemies? Again, many, many people seem to think this is a preferred alternative; but they also are fools.
We have been defeating Radical Islam; and we have been doing it militarily. It is true, that Radical Islam is not a viable system, sharing this trait with Communism; but neither have the alternatives proved to be viable. Every alternative has its weak points: Western Democracy depends for its success on a moral, rational populace, something which we do not have; and the other main alternative, Dictatorship, depends on the good will of the dictator. A third alternative is Theocracy and Monarchy, both dependent on widespread acceptance of the divine approval of the ruling clique. Good will among dictators, and divinely-sanctioned ruling cliques, however, are in short supply; so the world is not looking for an “ideal” ideology; it is looking for something that works for the moment to satisfy its needs. Such ideologies are not dependent for their success on reasoning or other methods: They depend on propaganda (which is of only passing effect) and military might.
I do not question the need for a strong American military, even one costing trillions of dollars, to maintain a stable world order. I only state that unless the American populace turn away from their self-seeking, self-destructive, godless ways, no amount of military might, and no amount of spending, military or otherwise, will save them from doom.
Presiden Bush called for a “War on Terror”, and since it is called a “WAR”, the instrument to fight it should be the Pentagon. What a colossal mistake!! The whole world had seen the failure of the Russians in using their army in their fight against terror. What arrogance to think our army would do much better – and our army has not succeeded, after how many trillions of dollars and how many casualties. To fight terror one must defeat the ideas which are the basis for the terror. The aim is not to destroy the expression of the ideology [terror], but to win over the minds of the people who became adherents of the ideology, and thus became willing terrorists. So IF the Pentagon DOES get out of the “War on Terror”, there is a chance that the President wil actually set up a force to face the ideology – and if enough inteligence, psychology, and effort is put into it, we may win the war on terror.
The main physical enemies of the US, at the moment, are China and Russia.
Radical Islam has, until recently, tried to seriously threaten us — with coups against pro-US regimes, with wars against Israel and with direct attacks on “soft targets” in America and the West. All of these attemps have failed; and I can’t think of anything which expresses that failure more, than the self-destructive wars in the Middle East, particularly Syria and Lebanon. I expect one last Islamic war coming, directed against Israel and led by Turkey. When that fails, I think the Muslims will give up.
Russia is crumbling as a world power. Even with our repeated failures in Congress, to keep our military funded, we are still outstripping the Russians — along with the Chinese as well. A case in point: aircraft carriers. The next Russian carrier is still a pipe dream; and the planned Type 002 Chinese carrier is expected to be a “catch-up” model, trying to incorporate features that US carriers have used and proven for decades, like steam catapults. The US, meanwhile, has 10 Nimitz-class super-carriers, which can do everything the Chinese can imagine doing in the future. We have also just commissioned the first of the Gerald Ford class, and have two more scheduled for completion in 2020 and 2o25, respectively — all this, with spending cuts and sequestering.
I just used the carriers as an example. Before any country can hope to go head-to-head with us on the high seas, they need to match us with carriers; and there is no prospect of that in the forseeable future.
I noted that Russia is crumbling. She suffers from “old age”, like most Western countries; and will not be able to keep up her pace of intervention around the world.
China is of America’s own making. When they were limping along ineffectively under Mao-style central planning, Nixon and Kissinger came up with the idea of transorming them, making them more like us. They have done so; and as a result, they have become prosperous; but they are slipping back into neo-Maoism, in the form of the cult of the personality around President (for life, it seems) Xi. Their edge will not likely last long.
So much for external threats. The benefit of having the US be the world’s paramount power, is that we have, until now, beein a Godly, rational, dependable power. That is changing: A country that cant even agree among its citizenry about fundamental things like maintaining border security, will not inspire trust among the leaders of the world. This is not the military sphere, nor the economic sphere: this is the sphere of serious problems in the area of national spiritual and mental health. When that totally collapses, military might will become dangerous to ourselves and other.