Comments on Andrew Krepinevich’s essay (The Pentagon’s Wasting Assets) on Small Wars Journal

A few days ago, I read Andrew Krepinevich’s essay “The Pentagon’s Wasting Assets" in Foreign Affairs magazine. I've been stewing on it ever since. Well, then I picked up on this piece in the online "Small Wars Journal" blog:

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2009/07/krepinevichs-essay-implies-dis/index.php

and could not help but make the following comments about the whole thing:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The most disturbing thing about Krepenevich's Foreign Affairs article is that it purports to be about power projection, but in fact fails to address the hard problems of projecting power even into the Eurasia littoral, much less the Eurasian depth. He identifies problems, then shrugs them off with policy choices that amount to at least a partial strategic withdrawal out of our admittedly
extended positions in Iraq and Afghanistan. But how far backwards is too far back ? This tradeoff is not even discussed, much less fairly considered.

I made this point to Mearsheimer at APSA a few years ago - and he didn't get it, either. If you reduce or eliminate your ground force presence in these places, you end up back in 1978 debating the mission and structure of the Rapid Deployment Force. Now we have these Stryker brigades and at least the current C-17 inventory, but deferring the FCS ground vehicles and killing the C-17 production line is hardly the way to improve the strategic mobility of US ground forces. Krepinevich does not even bother to argue the point in his article - he ignores the issue altogether.

And Krepinevich applies the same Alice-in-Wonderland logic to EFV and F-35 as well. These programs, which are based on clearly defined and well understood roles and missions, are attacked as developing "wasting assets". Now, if you pull enough ground forces out of forward bases in Eurasia, you may in fact have to conduct an early entry operation, and you may need to see if the Air Expeditionary Force concept works. And while we certainly do need to concern ourselves with the survivability of our aircraft carrier force - the very backbone our our sea dominance as well as our capability to project forces along the Eurasian littoral - Krepinevich's recommendations do not match his problem statement. If he thinks the F-18 can handle the strike mission job, he needs to come out and say so. You don't get more capability by buying less...I'm reminded of Loren Thompson's brilliant quip, "Smart power begins with hard cash". Boy, I wish I had made that one up.

There is a very dangerous "go-it-alone, we can handle this job" attitude growing up within the special operations and intelligence communities. While resorting to special operations as a leading element of national power can be a decent economy of force strategy in times when the USA needs to conserve its strength and prepare to fight another day, the record of Eisenhower's "New Look" as well as the Reagan Doctrine reveals that the "small war" LIC strategy builds up negative externalities that have to be redeemed in blood and treasure later on. Thus, Eisenhower's abandonment of limited wars made it necessary to fight one in Vietnam a decade later. Reagan's willingness to support insurgencies and unwillingness to engage in counterinsurgency led to the rise of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Clinton tried and failed to destabilize Iraq using the CIA alone, leaving Bush 43 with the task of regime change using a combination of conventional and unconventional means.

Obviously, with very stringent budgetary constraints and declining political support, the Pentagon must use the resources it is given as wisely as possible. But overpromising and overreaching leads to serious structural inequities and programmatic chaos. A more modest and practical long-term vision would be a welcome change on K Street and throughout Washington. We know how this ends when the chickens come home to roost.