The Future of Land Warfare

Michael E. O'Hanlon

• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780815726906
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

What happens if we bet too heavily on unmanned systems, cyber warfare, and special operations in our defense?

In today's U.S. defense policy debates, big land wars are out. Drones, cyber weapons, special forces, and space weapons are in. Accordingly, Pentagon budget cuts have honed in on the army and ground forces: this, after the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, seems like an appealing idea. No one really wants American boots on the ground in bloody conflicts abroad. But it is not so easy to simply declare an end to messy land wars. A survey of the world's trouble spots suggests that land warfare has more of a future than many now seem to believe.

In The Future of Land Warfare, Michael O'Hanlon offers an analysis of the future of the world's ground forces: Where are large-scale conflicts or other catastrophes most plausible? Which of these could be important enough to require the option of a U.S. military response? And which of these could in turn demand significant numbers of American ground forces in their resolution? O'Hanlon is not predicting or advocating big American roles in such operations—only cautioning against overconfidence that we can and will avoid them.

O'Hanlon considers a number of illustrative scenarios in which large conventional forces may be necessary: discouraging Russia from even contemplating attacks against the Baltic states; discouraging China from considering an unfriendly future role on the Korean peninsula; handling an asymmetric threat in the South China Sea with the construction and protection of a number of bases in the Philippines and elsewhere; managing the aftermath of a major and complex humanitarian disaster superimposed on a security crisis—perhaps in South Asia; coping with a severe Ebola outbreak not in the small states of West Africa but in Nigeria, at the same time that country falls further into violence; addressing a further meltdown in security conditions in Central America.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction: Historical, Strategic, and Technological Context

WHAT IS THE FUTURE of land warfare, and of the world's ground forces more generally? What can we realistically expect and project about the implications of interstate combat, civil conflict, and major humanitarian catastrophes for the world's armies in the decades to come?

In recent years the U.S. national security debate has been turning away from these questions. Fatigued by Iraq and Afghanistan, rightly impressed by the capabilities of U.S. special forces, transfixed by the arrival of new technologies such as drones, and increasingly preoccupied with a rising China and its military progress in domains ranging from space to missile forces to maritime operations, the American strategic community has largely turned away from thinking about ground combat.¹ This is actually nothing new. Something similar happened after the world wars, the Korean War and Vietnam War, and Operation Desert Storm in 1991, as well. That last time, the debate shifted to a supposed revolution in military affairs. Many called for a major transformation in U.S. military forces to respond to that presumed revolution, until the 9/11 attacks returned military analysis to more practical and immediate issues. But now the strategic debate seems to be picking up about where it left off at the turn of the century—except that in the intervening fifteen years, remarkable progress in technologies such as unmanned aerial systems has provided even more grist for those favoring a radical transition in how militaries prepare for and fight wars.

Much of this debate is welcome. Even if futurists understandably tend to get more wrong than right in their specific recommendations, a debate in which they challenge existing Pentagon rice bowls is preferable to complacency. As long as the burden of proof is on those who would dismantle proven concepts and capabilities when proposing a whole new approach to military operations and warfare, a world of too many ideas is preferable to a staid, unimaginative one of too few. The history of military revolutions suggests that established superpowers are more likely to be caught unprepared for, even unaware of, new ways of warfare than to change their own armed forces too much or too fast.

That said, pushback against transformative ideas will often be necessary. We have seen many unrealistic military ideas proposed for the post–World War II U.S. armed forces, from the Pentomic division of the 1950s, which relied on nuclear weapons for indirect fire, to the flawed counterinsurgency strategies of the 1960s, to the surreal nuclear counterforce strategies from Curtis Lemay onward in the cold war, to the dreamy Strategic Defense Initiative goals of the 1980s, to the proposals for “rods from God” and other unrealistic technologies in the revolution in military affairs debate of the 1990s. As such, wariness about new ideas is in order. Even in a great nation like the United States, groupthink can happen, and bad ideas can gain a following they do not deserve.

One hears much discussion today about the supposed obsolescence of large-scale ground combat. Official U.S. policy now leans in that direction too, as codified in the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance and 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, largely as a result of frustrations with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Accordingly, the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance, released under the signature of then Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, with a preface signed by President Obama, states flatly that “U.S. forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations.”² The next year the Pentagon carried out a so-called Strategic Capabilities and Management Review that examined the option of reducing the Army to just 380,000 active duty soldiers.³ Subsequently the Ryan-Murray budget compromise of late 2013 and other considerations led to a less stark goal of 440,000 to 450,000 active duty soldiers. But the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review again dismissed the plausibility of large-scale stabilization missions, though somewhat more gently, stating that “although our forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale prolonged stability operations, we will preserve the experience gained during the past ten years of counterinsurgency and stability operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.”⁴ The emphasis changed somewhat, but the fundamental point was the same. Ground warfare, or at least certain forms of it, was not only to be avoided when possible—certainly, that is sound advice—but not even truly prepared for. That may be less sound advice.

There are lots of reasons to believe that, whether we like it or not, ground warfare does have a future, and a very significant one at that. Nearly three-fourths of the world's full-time military personnel, almost 15 million out of some 20 million, are in their nations’ respective armies.⁵ Most wars today are civil wars, fought within states by ground forces. Interstate wars are rare, but when they do happen, they generally involve neighboring states and generally involve a heavy concentration of ground combat. The United States may be far away from most potential conflict zones, putting a greater premium on U.S. long-range strike capabilities, including those of air and naval forces, than is the case for most countries. Yet the United States works with more than sixty allies and security partners, which tend to emphasize their own armies in force planning and tend to worry about land warfare scenarios within or just beyond their own borders. Iraq and Afghanistan revealed the limitations of standoff warfare and the problems that can ensue when the United States places severe constraints on its use of ground power (especially in the first few years of each conflict).

To paraphrase the old Bolshevik saying, we may not have an interest in messy ground combat operations in the future, but they may have an interest in us. Put differently, in contemplating the character and scale of future warfare, the enemy gets a vote, too.

As such, this book addresses two central questions. First, what is the future of land warfare, and of other possible forms of large-scale violence on land, in the coming decades? Second, what are the implications for the U.S. military, but particularly the U.S. Army and its three main components—the active duty Army, the Army National Guard, and the Army Reserve?

The U.S. Marine Corps falls partially within the scope of my analysis, but only partially. It has important capacities for substantial ground operations, to be sure. Yet it is also a naval force, being part of the Department of the Navy, as well as an expeditionary force, with an emphasis on rapid responsiveness for multiple smaller contingencies around the world. As with the special forces, therefore, its mission is somewhat different from that of the main elements of the U.S. Army—and its future size and structure seem less in doubt as well. Nonetheless, it is certainly relevant to the general subject of this book and is frequently discussed in the pages that follow.

Since the cold war ended, the U.S. Army, like much of the nation's armed forces, has been built around the prospect of fighting up to two major regional wars at a time. That thinking has evolved, especially in the years when the United States was actually fighting two wars at once, in Iraq and Afghanistan (and in the process eliminating one of the threats on which the two-war scenarios had been premised, the government of Saddam Hussein). Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review began to shift the paradigm somewhat. The Pentagon's 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance and 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review moved further away from a two-war construct without jettisoning it altogether. Now, in the second of the two overlapping wars, it is deemed adequate to “inflict unacceptable costs” on an adversary.⁶ But the vagueness of the latter standard, deterrence by the threat of punishment, and changes in the international security order suggest that perhaps it is time to think afresh about the future of the U.S. Army and the other services. Planning for regional conflict will have to be a component of future force sizing, but with less specificity about likely foes than in the past and with a fuller range of considerations to complement the contingency analysis.

In this book, I begin with a blank sheet of paper about the future of land warfare and its implications for U.S. ground forces. The time frame is envisioned to go well beyond the current decade, into the 2020s and beyond. Where are future large-scale conflicts or other catastrophes on the world's land masses most plausible? Which of these could be important enough to necessitate the option of a U.S. military response? And which of these could in turn require significant numbers of American ground forces in their resolution?

Put differently, one frequently hears the adage that the United States does not have a good track record in predicting its future wars. Some even turn the saying on its head, saying that yes, we do have a good track record—a perfect one, in fact—of getting the future wrong. Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, and indeed the world wars (not to mention the American Civil War) were not accurately foreseen by most strategists or planners.

Yet it is still important to examine how the configuration of worldwide threats, resources, centers of economic power, overseas political dynamics, and American strategic interests could produce conflict in the future. Strategists may not know when or where. But having a sense of the character and likely magnitude of any future conflict is essential. To paraphrase Eisenhower, moreover, the planning process is essential, even if any plans themselves that we manage to develop may not be precisely relevant. The alternative to analysis is to have future forces and Pentagon priorities determined by guesswork, bureaucratic and political inertia, and faddishness about new technologies, as well as by apparent new trends in conflict. We cannot predict the future. But for purposes of understanding the necessary size and shape of the future American military, including its ground forces, it is important to try to delimit it as much as possible. Historically, the United States has had several periods of coherent grand strategy—the Monroe Doctrine in the nineteenth century, victory in Europe first and in the Pacific later in World War II, containment in the cold war—and the nation as well as its allies should aspire to some coherence and cogency in the future as well.⁷

Some would counsel against preparedness for plausible military missions on the grounds that by being prepared, we might stray into conflicts that would have been best avoided. The 2003 Iraq War may be a recent case in point—a “war of choice,” in Richard Haass's pithy depiction, that surely would not have been undertaken without a ready and fairly large standing military.⁸ But for every such case in U.S. history, there are probably several—including the two world wars and the Korean War—in which lack of preparedness proved an even greater problem. Moreover, in Iraq and Afghanistan, improper preparation for a certain type of fighting arguably made the initial years in both these wars far less successful than they might have been. Nor is it so clear that the United States is really spoiling for military action abroad. Americans may not be as restrained in the use of force as they often like to believe themselves to be. Yet at the same time, casualty aversion—and, more recently, a national souring on the kind of ground operations conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan—impose important constraints on action as well. Deliberately staying militarily unprepared for plausible missions as a way of avoiding unsuccessful military operations abroad thus seems an unwise and highly risky strategy for the nation.

The time frame of the analysis is roughly 2020 through 2040—beyond the immediate budgeting challenges of the next appropriations cycle and five-year defense plan but not so far off as to be disconnected from current policy decisionmaking. Of course, there will be surprises between now and 2020, but some of the main drivers of international conflict can probably be identified.

Several countries loom large in the pages that follow. They include the world's largest, most industrialized, most militarized, and most populous nations. These states have the wherewithal to cause or experience security challenges that could pose systemic and large-scale disruptions to the global order and to American interests. Prominent examples include Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Mexico. What are the prospects that some of these countries could attack their neighbors, turn on themselves in large-scale civil warfare, suffer massive tragedies of some type, lose track of nuclear materials or other highly dangerous agents, or otherwise create a major international crisis that could not be easily ignored?

The analysis is not confined to traditional war scenarios. It also looks at complex humanitarian or relief activities of various types, some of which could involve an element of violence but others of which may not. It considers, for example, the chances that large, populous parts of certain countries or regions could suffer enormous tragedy that would dwarf the world's worst disasters to date and necessitate massive and sustained relief efforts. Such contingencies could have significant implications for the global order and thus should be factored into American strategic thinking and military force planning.

The policy implications of these kinds of analyses are very important. They go beyond predictable, if major, decisions about matters such as when to replace the Abrams tank, or how many brigade combat teams to retain in the U.S. Army Active and Guard force structure, or how to reshape and reconfigure such combat units. Even broader and more fundamental questions arise. Should the United States retain a large active duty army, as it has since World War II, or revert to an earlier model of a citizens’ army, with greater reliance on the National Guard? Does the U.S. Army, along with the Marine Corps, need to retain a large-scale expeditionary capability of dominating maneuver warfare virtually anywhere on Earth? How great should America's reliance on allies be in the future?

This book concludes with such questions. I ultimately argue for an army not unlike that described in the Obama administration's current plan—roughly a million soldiers, with about 450,000 on active duty. However, the mathematics behind this force-sizing construct are different from those of the Pentagon today. As noted, today's Department of Defense retains some elements of a two-war capability. My framework would not. Instead, it would plan for a single decisive war, combined with a possibly prolonged U.S. role in two simultaneous, multilateral missions, which could involve counterinsurgency, stabilization, deterrence, or a major disaster response. It might be described as a “1+2” paradigm, for one war, together with two smaller and more multilateral but potentially long and complex operations.

The book does not begin with that issue, however. Instead, after a brief review of the history of U.S. ground forces in this chapter and observations about U.S. grand strategy, I attempt to determine where large-scale violence or mayhem on land is most plausible and where it would be most consequential strategically. I then ask which contingencies could require a large-scale U.S. response with ground forces, rather than some other mix of military tools. In many cases the U.S. preference would surely be—and should surely be—to avoid direct involvement in any operation with U.S. forces if at all possible. However, in light of trends in military burden sharing worldwide and the irreplaceability of American leadership for many difficult military operations, it is quite plausible that in some cases, direct U.S. intervention as part of a coalition could prove necessary. The book concludes with implications for the force postures and budgets of the U.S. ground forces.

A HISTORICAL SKETCH OF AMERICAN GROUND POWER

Throughout its history, the United States has been influenced by dueling paradigms in sizing an...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 - Introduction: Historical, Strategic, and Technological Context
• 2 - Conflicts Real, Latent, and Imaginable
• 3 - Scenarios with Russia or China
• 4 - Scenarios in South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas
• 5 - Toward an Army of the Future for the United States
• 6 - The Case for a Million-Soldier U.S. Army
• Appendixes
• Notes
• Index