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Posted By Thomas E. Ricks
Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - 6:59 AM
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The majority of people in the U.S. armed forces joined since 9/11, and so only have known a military operating with nearly unconstrained resources. But the decade-long tidal wave of defense spending is ending, as General Barno discusses below. That's not all bad -- in hard choices lie the beginnings of strategy.
By Lt. Gen. David Barno, U.S. Army (ret.)
Best Defense chief Army correspondentThe Nixon Center sponsored its annual National Policy Conference recently at the Mayflower Hotel in downtown Washington. The agenda featured a star-studded cast of former senior government officials and current practitioners, and was opened by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger with a sobering message, that our purpose must be to rediscover "realism in foreign policy. ... Any nation must accept its own limitations -- the whole world is not waiting for American leadership. ... We must understand what we can do and what we cannot -- and should not -- do."
The opening panel was chaired by retired USAF General Chuck Boyd, the panel included Joe Klein of Time magazine, Paul Pillar of Georgetown University, Ken Pollack of Brookings and John Nagl of CNAS. Each of these luminaries brought a very different perspective to our two ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan -- as well as the war "formerly known as GWOT." Nagl and Pollack amply described the current challenges and prospects of U.S. actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, while Joe Klein outlined the massive transformation of the U.S. military into a well-oiled counter-insurgency machine -- and noted where the machine may not be working today in parts of Afghanistan. We'll get to Pillar later.
Only in the Q and A did the 800 lb elephant lope into the room: With the U.S. facing a staggering national debt, record-setting deficits, a slow economic recovery and a future with ever-larger entitlement program costs, what can the U.S. afford to be doing in overseas military efforts? Is that picture today now different than in the past? And where does Afghanistan in particular fit into that calculus today?
While much of the discussion predictably got wrapped around the "new American way of War -- COIN," far less commentary was devoted to the strategic picture. Only Paul Pillar truly got at the larger issue of how our growing commitment in Afghanistan fits inside of a changed global strategic context for the United States.
Some of his tough questions:
- Why are we actually in Afghanistan?
- Is the availability of "sanctuary" (in a world of myriad sanctuaries) really important?
- Do the benefits of denying sanctuary in Afghanistan fit into any cost-benefit logic for the U.S.? (vs. benefits of Afghan sanctuary to the terrorists)
- Are we confusing sunk costs with future investment decisions?
- Do we truly understand that successful COIN is a means toward an end -- rather than an end in and of itself?
- And most importantly: Are our actions in Afghanistan and the region reducing the terrorist threat to the U.S.?
Pillar's views stood in stark contrast with the usual suspects of debate: civilian surge adequacy, Karzai's governing capacity, the prevalence of corruption, or the speed of Afghan security force growth. They were a timely reminder that in the all-consuming nature of war, the trees quickly grow to obscure the forest, and that it is important to remind ourselves of first principles. Pillar pulled our lens back from the riveting small picture of the day-to-day fight in Afghanistan to the fuzzier big picture - regional, global, economic as well as military. It was both discomfiting and necessary.
CNAS' Andrew Exum (aka Abu Muqawama) has just authored a hard-hitting report spotlighting the lack of political strategy in our Afghan COIN efforts -- and it's worth a close read. But beyond the political strategy of the Afghan counter-insurgency, the regional and global strategies of the U.S. as we face down what some have called a "global insurgency" deserve some close scrutiny as well.
On the 800-lb gorilla in the room: We're moving into a different world than the one of even five years ago. As one very senior former military commander noted recently: "We are no longer going to be operating from a position of strategic superiority." And as the U.S. military shifts into an era that will surely be marked by downward pressure on defense budgets, civilian and military leaders will have to make choices and set priorities. Buying everything is no longer gonna be an option.
Competing visions of future war are going to be fought out, with both winners and losers in the fight for fewer dollars. One fundamental competition that could emerge may pit people -- especially ground forces -- against technology. Costs of both are skyrocketing. This may be a false debate, but its outlines are already beginning to appear.
What kind of wars are we going to prepare to fight -- when we can't peanut better spread dollars and attention on everything? Where do we strike the balance so we simply don't get it too far wrong to adapt when the next big fight comes? These will be truly tough calls and are the essence of looking beyond the current fights to get our next global defense strategy right. And resources start shrinking, we may be in for a rough ride.
Interesting perspective from Gen. Barno. I hope it is considered thoughtfully by commentators on national security policy. In particular, there's this blogger named Tom Ricks who has put up what must be dozens of posts about how America needs to stay in Iraq forever, and in Afghanistan for about that long, without once addressing the cost of the deployments in these countries.
Iraq is unraveling! Disaster is nigh! And the consequences of pouring billions of borrowed dollars every month into these massive combat deployments just never becomes part of the discussion. Thanks to Gen. Barno, perhaps it will now.
Indeed, I agree with ZATHRAS in his observation that Gen. Barno comments are most interesting and will perhaps be considered by many as provocative. How ironic it is that our participation in the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan will probably have to end in the intermediate term not because we have accomplished anything but because of our own self inflicted economic wounds. In past history this was often the key background factor in the termination of various conflicts. Gen. Barno also refreshing defies the usual image of the military brass as being ignorant or insensitive to economics. The traditional attitude of military is that the economic costs of war are not a military factor and thus are usually not weighed. In our case, the merits of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (of which of which after an exhaustive search I can find none) will likely be trumped in the end by a thirteen trillion dollar deficit (and growing) and an economy that is in a serious long-term secular decline incapable of filling the astounding gap between our massive out of control appetites and our real national income. Wars of choice for us at least have finally become a luxury.
Discomforting... and necessary
Interesting comments from Gen Barno. I also enjoyed his roundtable discussion at the CNAS event on Officer development. It will be interesting to see how the younger generaton (says mid thirties guy) adapts to a new geopolitical reality they have been, heretofore, unfamiliar with: Peace (or something resembling it).
I recall a time in the military when life did not revolve around your next deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan, training funds were scarce, and the term "war story" was more figurative than literal.
With all respect and recognition of sacrifice and service due Gen. Charles Boyd (ret), we could use more OODA and less hoopla at the national command level, and a tac air orientation in the fixed wing community.
When did night-only AC-130's become our premier troop support platform, with helo pilots deemed more exposable to enemy fire than fixed wing attack craft designed for CAS?
Jesus! Finally the right questions!
And take a look at Steve Coll in May 24 The New Yorker (abstract here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/05/24/100524fa_fact_coll). We've got a bunch of shoe clerks trying to play The Great Game.
When faced with a (costly) mess in the pol-mil world, first principles come in handy: what are our vital national interests and how will they be best served in this area of policy and operations?
I've been asking the vital-interests question vis a vis Afghanistan in this blog for months, with no answer other than some macho mumbling about honor and a reprise of the sunk-cost fallacy.
Afghanistan is a mug's game.
C'mon Ducky. You act as if you are briefing Congress here. This blog is mostly composed of a bunch of punters who like to hear themselves talk (and yes I include myself in that bunch). Oh there's also the super psychos like GP and Admiral.
I gave a handy description of those so called sunk cost fallacies in one of our recent posts on the subject - but you don't like anything contrary to your own brand of contrarianism. Indeed you accused me of having been in Afhanistan for 8 years plus with no discernible results. I didn't respond at the time - the forum had closed before I returned - but I would say "Well I haven't been there at all, but even if I had I don't think I would take responsibility for the entire party - be it success OR failure."
In the end the only solution you ever offer is to get out. Since two diametrically opposed Presidential administrations have not chosen to follow your handy advice perhaps you might accept that your solution isn't a necessarily viable one. Regardless this blog isn't ever going to be the proper source for answers. It's just a good place to air arguments and postulate solutions.
Suggest you do as many others have and pick up your poison pen and send your concerns to your local Congresscritters. Also suggest you offer more productive recommendations than "just get out" or "the Army suxxor." But I have to warn you, I suspect the reception won't be much different than what you get here.
One ties it up with the tactical and the practical: how to puzzle through today's puzzle. It's the Army preference, to bypass the jugular and go straight for the capillary.
The other looks at the strategic and significant: what's the goal and is it worth the candle?
Army types tend to get bogged down in the trivia, so someone - strategists, pundits, even 5-year-old children - need to help them lift their vision to at least the horizon and perhaps beyond.
So, two points...
One: the Army has made hash of the war in Afghanistan. With scant limits on resources and the finest technology, training, and troops the world's ever seen, the Army's in-theater leadership
offers no real goals, no timeline, no path to victory, no exit.
Two: vital-interest analysis - distasteful as it seems to some - is always necessary when lives and big bucks are on the table, more so when the endeavor at issue is stripping us of defense capability in the rest of the world.
I'm still waiting to hear why we're still there. Given that Afghanistan is a costly and aimless mess, what's the virtue in continuing it? Yes, I'd leave. And undertake thorough military reform - starting with My Favorite Army. YMMV.
Hunter, we went through he same angst in Vietnam. Both the Johnson and Nixon administrations were obsessed with losing prestige and loath to be the administration that lost the war. Vietnam was a mess in which ’battlefield victories’ in the end counted for nothing, indeed, Giap was right in saying they were in fact irrelevant. We have got ourselves caught in a similar billowing fiasco in Afghanistan and neither party is willing to take the inevitable heat when it comes to terminating this failed enterprise.
I reject your implication that both the highly different Bush and Obama administration are pursuing this war because in a way a governing logic demands it. Since when has logic become the acting principle in Washington? The fact that we are running a deficit of $13 trillion dollars with little hope of reducing that let alone stopping its growth indicates that rational assessment and logic does not govern the ‘politics’ of Congressional or Executive decision-making. Politics is the true currency of Washington and eventually politics will demand our exit from that unhappy land.
Are you accusing me of opposing free speech? Really? Really?
Couldn't be further from the truth. I guess I am opposed to ill-informed, repetitive speech that offers plenty of critique and no real answers. But I would never impede that.
I'm not sure why Bacon raises the issue of freedom of speech in this context. The first amendment protects governmental abridgment on free speech, but it says nothing about free speech by non-governmental entities. Private citizens are free to restrict speech if they want.
We have the house staked out and we are ready to come in. What's the frequency Kenneth?
I tried to shut RD off/up? Please, I'd sooner be able to dam the Amazon. I encouraged him to come up with a viable option instead of his non-solution.
But feel free to pointificate about your rights. I'm reminded of Stan/Loretta in Monty Python's Life of Brian.... http://montypython.50webs.com/scripts/Life_of_Brian/8.htm
LORETTA: I want to have babies.
REG: You want to have babies?!
LORETTA: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
REG: But... you can't have babies.
LORETTA: Don't you oppress me.
and so on
Rubber Ducky, you hit that one out of the ball park. Remember this little exchange in "Apocalypse Now" between Colonel Kurtz and Captain Willard?
Kurtz: Did they say why, Willard, why they want to terminate my command?
Willard: I was sent on a classified mission, sir.
Kurtz: It's no longer classified, is it? Did they tell you?
Willard: They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.
Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?
Willard: I don't see any method at all, sir.
Kurtz: I expected someone like you. What did you expect? Are you an assassin?
Willard: I'm a soldier.
Kurtz: You're neither. You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.
The sad pity about Afghanistan is that it has some 28 million people with an annual per capita GDP of $500. The country's official national GDP is something like $14 billion. We're spending twice that each month in the country. With a little creative finance, we've got to be able to figure out a way to put together a trust fund which could double or triple the annual income of every Afghani for the next 20-30 years which would be cheaper than conducting the operations we've undertaken there now.
Love it Hunter, classic. Not able to get on here much anymore but checked it out today, glad I did. I see Don is upset about being held down by "The Man" again and I did not realized that you were in fact attempting to take away his or RDs right of Free Speech until he pointed it out to me, thanks Don ;)
Don, I know "The Man" and I plan on telling him to keep an eye on you!! ;)
Off to work, gotta proof read more lol
A dictator in the making. Typical of today´s officers.
Always good for a laugh, sadly not good for anything else.
The Pentagon war mongers will watch the people starve before they give up any of THEIR money.
Semper Fi, Mac.
Is it just me, or does anyone else see the irony in the word 'sobering' used in the same sentence mentioning former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger?
As an intern at the Nixon center back in the mid-1990s, I sat in on many such roundtable discussions and panels around national security strategy. One such panel featured Laurie Mylroie and her 'research' connecitng the 1993 bombing of the WTC and Saddam Hussein. Other such round tables also lacked focus on the bigger picture about strategy and rather on the tactics of what to do now addresses issues at hand, most focusing on criticism of the declining defense budgets 15 years ago. All the participants were well suited to the topics addressed, but mostly had a short sighted view on the issues. I applaud the Pillar's views and General Barno's, as well as, Mr. Ricks' attempts to highlight the log-view.
The war expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan are a drop in the bucket compared to the trillions the government is spending on the various bailouts and stimuli in the past couple years alone. Add to that the hundreds of billions in mandatory spending the government was already spending for the various entitlement programs which account for over two thirds of the budget. I know people say all that is necessary and good and makes our society better and all that jazz. But it rubs me the wrong way when the politicians decide the place to pinch pennies is national security. Very short sited.
Your analysis that the expenditures for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan pale compared to funds the Federal government used to support the economy is wrong. You are comparing only the annual expenditures for the wars against a one-time expenditure. That is a typical mistake made by an economic neophyte when they compare a flow of values versus a stock of values when assessing a national economic performance assessment. That got drummed into us by our economic profs, that you had to understand the difference.
Right now, we are in essentially the Second Great Depression. During the First Great Depression, the nation's spending on the military declined, rather than increasing as has happened over the last ten years. Worse, we've gotten precious little for it, because we collectively don't feel any more secure but we do feel quite a bit poorer. Reducing spending on the military won't do much to reduce national security. Rather, I suspect it will call forth the best and brightest to do things more creatively and effectively. Isn't that the argument used for cutting programs in other areas? If it's true in those sectors, why not defense?
Does the total expendature on the wars equal or exceed $1trillion? I don't think it does, but I don't have the numbers in front of me, so I'll conceed that point to you. But I do stand by my point that entitlement programs take up two thirds of federal budget and while our defense spending is immense, it is still dwarfed by many other federal programs that are frankly more expendable. FDR cutting military spending in 30's didn't get us our of the Great Depression - World War II did. And when the war did come, we paid for our unpreparedness in blood in places like Bataan and the Kasarine Pass. And even though we eventually won the war, we did so at a considerably higher cost than should have been necessary because our weapons were inferior to the Germans', at least on land.
Take a look at this site: < http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf >. It references the Congressional Research Service which points out that the war cost had reached $940B last year. Throw in the additional appropriations just made this year and you easily reach $1T - for direct costs. Let's add in the indirect costs for additional veteran's benefits going forward for 100 years and the costs to replace depleted equipment and I suspect that we'd see a number reaching the $2T level.
I would encourage you to read the United States budget documents before posting about the entitlement programs you seem to detest. A quick glance at the Wikipedia post about the US budget ( ) will shows that the budget for SocSec, Medicare and Medicaid (which are the entitlement programs I can only presume you are addressing) total just under 24% of the Federal budget. Compare that to the just over 20% spent on the Defense Department, Veterans Affairs and a chunk of Energy. What's worse is that those entitlement programs are currently generating a surplus for the Treasury, whereas the Defense spending appears to be pure cost-center expenditures.
Cutting back in defense spending will have impacts across the force. One of the first things that will get cut off will be GWOT funds...that is Company and BN level units willnot be able to justify 3-4 plasma screen TVs for their TOCs, all that extra stuff at the tactical level may go away. Not every Soldier wil have all the gadgets on their M4s, etc...
We just saw the lowest pay raise in a long long time, I think we can expect more of that percentage pay increases in the coming years.
One question that ties into the debate we have had on this blog is in the area of COIN vs Conventional warfare. When GWOT funds get turned off, and the wars draw down, will there be enough money to retrain all these units in conventional war...bullets, artillary rounds, flight hours, and fuel cost money. Lets hope we can afford a transition and retraining of the force.
Historically speaking, once a society decides to go down a path of militarism and interventionism it takes a heck of a lot to change that path.
I just don't see real change happening here. The level of disagreement on most important issues, outside of cultural red herrings, is negligible. For example, the whole "gay" thing. If conservatives were genuinely concerned about marriage then they would outlaw no-fault divorces. Try suggesting that to your average Republican, the look on their faces and the mental squirming they do is priceless.
It seems like American taxpayers are more than willing to let their infrastructure and local economies rot in the name of security and in the hopes that they will somehow benefit from an economy based on risk free market manipulation and corporate welfare, with a strong element of trickle-down patronage, and group-based entitlements such as Mr. Ricks was arguing for some weeks ago. (Good luck with that free degree in this brave new economy Mrs., you can go work for a collection agency, maybe be a manager at the KFC, or go back and work for the military,)
The level of venality and ignorance, if not outright corruption, one sees in Congress, the voter, and in the electoral process also makes the idea that somehow the US will meaningfully reign in a special interest based and culturally hot button issue like "defense" spending farcical. Everybody "needs" the spending to continue for economic, geopolitical and ideological reasons. It would be nice to drive by the Pentagon and see them holding a bake sale, but oh well. Folks need to make their money, and many Americans, it would appear, don't have much of a sense of self worth unless we remain a global hegemon.
Right now the only branch of the government that most Americans still respect is the military. People disdain, and correctly so, the executive and Congress and the myriad of commercially co-opted bureaucracies. But rather than seeing the military as part of this hopelessly corrupt system, buoyed by an artificial dollar, they focus on the cultural fluff.
Will the US become a new Prussia? Easily, if it brings in universal military and "civilian" service like some have argued for, but don't radically decentralize our military. But most likely, we could end up like Chomsky seems to think, a nation where the majority of the populace is poorer, but still a dangerous hegemon.
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