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Desert Duty. An F-15C of the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley AFB, Va., temporarily deployed to Saudi Arabia. Since the 1991 Gulf War, USAF pilots have flown thousands of sorties to contain Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. |
In 2000, for the first time in years, national defense was an issue in a Presidential election campaign, made that way by the Republican candidate George W. Bush.
Bush, speaking at the Citadel in September 1999, introduced his positions on defense. He said that “even the highest morale is eventually undermined by back-to-back deployments, poor pay, shortages of spare parts and equipment, and rapidly declining readiness.”
He said that the Clinton Administration “wants things both ways: to command
great forces, without supporting them.”
In transforming the armed forces, he would go beyond marginal improvements
and “use this window of opportunity to skip a generation of technology.”
Among specific program intentions, Bush said that “at the earliest possible
date, my Administration will deploy anti-ballistic missile systems, both theater
and national, to guard against attack and blackmail.”
He promised to review the openended deployments: “Sending our military
on vague, aimless, and endless deployments is the swift solvent of morale. ...
I will work hard to find political solutions that allow an orderly and timely
withdrawal from places like Kosovo and Bosnia. We will encourage our allies
to take a broader role. We will not be hasty. But we will not be permanent peacekeepers,
dividing warring parties. This is not our strength or our calling.”
Another declaration that got extensive notice came from Bush’s running
mate, vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney. “Rarely has so much been
demanded of our armed forces and so little given to them in return,” Cheney
said in summer 2000. “George W. Bush and I are going to change that. I
have seen our military at its finest. And I can promise them now, help is on
the way.”
A Decade of Neglect
The 1990s were a decade of neglect. The defense budget was cut repeatedly.
It bottomed out in 1998, some 37 percent below the Cold War peak.
The armed forces were a third smaller but the Clinton Administration’s
activist policy of “Engagement and Enlargement” abroad kept them far
busier. The force was nominally structured to fight two overlapping major theater
conflicts, but it was never sized, equipped, or funded to do so.
Aging equipment wore out but was not replaced. Readiness rates fell. Force
modernization programs were curtailed and postponed. Buildings and runways deteriorated
for lack of maintenance. New words like “optempo” and “perstempo”
entered the lexicon to describe the relentless pace of deployments to one overseas
contingency after another.
The force had slipped so far that, by some estimates, it needed $100 billion
more a year just to avoid falling further behind—and that did not include
any force modernization or transformation.
There was already considerable momentum for a defense increase, in Congress
and elsewhere. Even President Clinton, on his way out of office, proposed a
2002 defense budget $14.2 billion higher than the Fiscal 2001 level.
Rumsfeld’s Review
Thus it came as something of a surprise when, shortly after the inauguration
in January 2001, the White House announced that Bush would stick with the 2002
Clinton defense budget until Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld had completed
a sweeping review of force structure and requirements to determine long-term
strategic requirements.
Rumsfeld was tight-lipped about the big review. It was widely believed that
the study would be run by Andrew Marshall, the Pentagon’s legendary director
of net assessment, and that it would be done by March 2001.
In actuality, Rumsfeld had put more than a dozen study panels to work behind
closed doors, but only a few people knew that at the time. The panels consisted
mostly of outsiders. Security was extraordinarily tight. The results, not altogether
surprising, were rampant rumor, confusion, and discord. Rumsfeld didn’t
confirm the rumors, but he didn’t deny them either.
By the middle of May 2001, the uproar reached the point that Rumsfeld went
on a media blitz, holding 14 press interviews and media availabilities in three
weeks.
He said the review wasn’t that big, that the work by his panels was just
exploratory, that there was no big plan to reorganize the armed forces. He said
the panel findings would be rolled into the next Quadrennial Defense Review,
which had earlier slowed down its efforts in deference to the panels. The QDR
was revived and put on what the Pentagon called “a forced march” to
produce results by the middle of the summer.
Rumsfeld recognized the magnitude of the problem before him.
“First, because we have underfunded and overused our forces, we find we
are short a division, we are short airlift, we have been underfunding aging
infrastructure and facilities, we are short high-demand/low-density assets,
the aircraft fleet is aging at considerable and growing cost to maintain, the
Navy is declining in numbers, and we are steadily falling below acceptable readiness
standards,” he told Congress in June 2001.
“Second, we have skimped on our people, doing harm to their trust and
confidence, as well as to the stability of our force. ...
“Third, we have underinvested in dealing with future risks. We have failed
to invest adequately in the advanced military technologies we will need to meet
the emerging threats of the new century.”
Fortunately, Rumsfeld said, transforming part of the force would be sufficient.
“The blitzkrieg was an enormous success, but it was accomplished by only
a 13 percent transformed German Army,” he said.
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Heavy Demand. With multiple operations under way, tankers have gotten a workout. Most USAF KC-135s are old, hard used, and a maintenance problem. Last year, more than 24 percent of the fleet was in depot maintenance. |
The “4-2-1” Standard
By law, a new President must send Congress a National Security Strategy within
150 days of taking office. For the Bush Administration, the due date came and
went. The National Security Strategy would not appear until September 2002.
The National Defense Strategy, published by the Pentagon, normally follows
the National Security Strategy. This time the defense strategy came first. It
was not a separate document, as usual, but rather part of the Quadrennial Defense
Review, which was coming to a conclusion in early September 2001.
Then came Sept. 11, 2001, and the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington,
D.C. Suddenly, the war on terror was Mission No. 1. There could be no sanctuary
for terrorism.
“Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make,” Bush
said to a joint session of Congress. “Either you are with us, or you are
with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor
or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”
The QDR, published Sept. 30, 2001, included some last-minute inserts to reflect
the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, but it basically followed an outline of instructions
Rumsfeld had laid down in June and July. It introduced a new strategy and a
new force-sizing standard.
The short title of the defense strategy was “Assure, Dissuade, Deter,
Defeat.” Assure allies and friends. Dissuade other nations from future
military competition with the US. Deter threats and coercion against US interests.
If deterrence fails, decisively defeat any adversary.
It had a harder military edge to it than “Shape, Prepare, Respond ”
did. Taken along with other signs from the Bush Administration, it also indicated
that the United States would not retreat very much from engagements abroad.
The Expeditionary Air and Space Force could look for more of the same.
The orientation of strategy had changed from threat based to capabilities based.
It focused on how an adversary might fight instead of on who the adversary might
be or when and where the war might occur. It gave special attention to capabilities
that adversaries might possess or could develop and on capabilities that we
would need ourselves.
In the change that attracted the most public attention, the new strategy dumped
former Defense Secretary Les Aspin’s force-sizing standard from 1993, in
which forces were supposedly structured to fight and win, almost simultaneously,
two major regional conflicts—later called Major Theater Wars, or MTWs.
The new standard was “4-2-1.” It said the force should be sized to
do the following:
The new standard was more demanding than two MTWs, and it was more reliant
on airpower. The force still had to stop aggressors in two theaters at the same
time. What the standard eliminated—as Rumsfeld made clear—was one
occupation force. The principal effect would be on ground forces.
“By removing the requirement to maintain a second occupation force, we
can free up new resources for the future and for other, lesser contingencies
that may now confront us,” Rumsfeld said.
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Expedited Airpower. After many “temporary” operations in the 1990s, USAF reconfigured its operational forces into an expeditionary mode. Tent cities, such as this in Afghanistan, are routine sights. |
The War on Terror
The counteroffensive against terrorists, Operation Enduring Freedom, began
on Oct. 7, 2001, with air strikes in Afghanistan.
Within the month, an outcry arose that the war was being lost. Airpower couldn’t
get the job done. It would not be possible, the critics said, to take Kabul
or any of the other cities with airpower and indigenous forces. The operation
was bogged down. The Taliban would hold on through winter. Our best hope, they
said, was a ground offensive in the spring. It would take between 35,000 and
250,000 ground troops.
The critics were wrong. When heavy bombers, assisted by US spotters on the
ground, began hammering the front-line positions, the defenses crumbled. Afghan
irregulars, supported by airpower and US Special Forces, took Mazar-e Sharif
and Kabul, swept south, and, by the middle of November, were in control of most
of the country.
In December 2001, Bush returned to the Citadel—where he had made his campaign
speech on defense two years previously—and updated his commitment to military
transformation. “This revolution in our military is only beginning, and
it promises to change the face of battle,” Bush said. “Afghanistan
has been a proving ground for this new approach. These past two months have
shown that an innovative doctrine and high-tech weaponry can shape and then
dominate an unconventional conflict.”
Furthermore, he said, “We’re striking with great effectiveness, at
greater range, with fewer civilian casualties. More and more, our weapons can
hit moving targets. When all of our military can continuously locate and track
moving targets—with surveillance from air and space—warfare will be
truly revolutionized.”
The air campaign tapered off after January 2002. The Navy had flown 70 percent
of the strike sorties, but the Air Force had delivered 74 percent of the tonnage.
Military emphasis in Afghanistan shifted to the ground. Operation Anaconda,
which began on March 1, 2002, was an Army operation, supported by airpower.
The goal was to dig what was left of al Qaeda out of the Afghan mountains. It
was markedly less successful than the air campaign, killing perhaps 500, but
many of the enemy got away.
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Bush's Major Strategic Initiatives
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With operations still in progress in Afghanistan, Bush introduced major
initiatives on missile defense and nuclear weapons. In December 2001,
he announced US withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty,
giving Russia formal notice that the withdrawal would be effective six
months later. “I have concluded the ABM Treaty hinders our government’s ability
to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue state
missile attacks,” Bush said. “We know that the terrorists, and
some of those who support them, seek the ability to deliver death and
destruction to our doorstep via missile. And we must have the freedom
and the flexibility to develop effective defenses against those attacks.” On Jan. 9, 2002, the Pentagon released the Nuclear Posture Review report.
It said Russia was no longer the enemy and that the main concern had become
rogue states with weapons of mass destruction. The nation would rely less
on offensive nuclear weapons than it had done in the past. The Pentagon said it could take two-thirds of the operational US nuclear
warheads out of service by 2012, reducing the total to 2,200 deployed
warheads or fewer. Some of the withdrawn warheads would be destroyed.
Others would be
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The famed Strategic Triad of the Cold War (ICBMs, bombers, SLBMs) would
be replaced by a “New Triad,” consisting of (1) offensive strike
systems, i.e., the old Strategic Triad, (2) active and passive defenses,
and (3) a revitalized defense research and development and industrial
infrastructure to “provide new capabilities in a timely fashion to
meet emerging threats.” Three times in 2002, the world was reminded forcefully of the dangers
inherent in the proliferation of nuclear weapons. India and Pakistan, both possessing nuclear weapons, went to the brink
of war. The Israel–Palestine crisis intensified. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
warned that if attacked by Iraq with nonconventional weapons, Israel would
“exercise its right to self-defense.” It would not restrain
itself, as it did when attacked by Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. In October, Bush announced the revelation by North Korea that it had
been secretly developing nuclear weapons for years and that it now possessed
“more powerful weapons.” Sen. John McCain (R–Ariz.) pointed out the difference in dealing with Iraq and North Korea on nuclear weapons. “Our determination to confront Saddam Hussein openly and with all necessary means demonstrates a freedom to act against an enemy that does not—yet—possess nuclear weapons [rather than] waiting until he possesses nuclear weapons, as North Korea now does, thereby constraining our ability to respond to a developing danger. We cannot allow Iraq to become the North Korea of the Middle East.” |
Iraq and Pre-emption
Through the winter of 2001–02, force gathered behind a proposition to
oust Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq and end his efforts to develop weapons
of mass destruction. Most of the early advocates of such action were Republicans,
but staunchly among them was Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, the Democratic candidate
for vice president in 2000.
In his State of the Union speech, Bush described an “Axis of Evil”—states
like North Korea, Iran, and Iraq that sponsor and support terrorism and which
he said were arming to threaten the peace of the world.
Secretary of State Colin Powell told Congress in February that the Administration
was set on “regime change” in Iraq. That led to political anguish
and accusations, which were seemingly blind to the fact that regime change in
Iraq had been US policy for a long time.
An October 1998 resolution, adopted unanimously by both houses of Congress
and signed into law by President Clinton, said: “It should be the policy
of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam
Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government
to replace that regime.”
However, the controversy about regime change paled in comparison to the firestorm
of objection stirred up by Bush’s doctrine of pre-emption, declared in
a speech at West Point June 1.
In some cases, Bush said, the Cold War doctrines of deterrence and containment
would still apply, but deterrence meant nothing to terror networks with no nation
or citizens to defend, and containment was not possible when “unbalanced
dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles
or secretly provide them to terrorist allies.”
“If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too
long,” Bush said. “We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his
plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge.”
Some saw pre-emption as the equivalent of what the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor.
Others saw it as more akin to what the Israeli Air Force did in 1981, when it
attacked and destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. In retrospect, the
consensus is that destroying the Iraqi reactor was a good thing, although there
was a great deal of moral hand-wringing about it at the time.
Pre-emption was not a policy intended solely for Iraq, although Iraq was clearly
a candidate. Hawkish elements in the Administration and in the news media argued
that the President had all of the authority he needed to strike Iraq and that
he should do so lest Saddam Hussein succeed in the near future in his determination
to obtain nuclear weapons.
In July 2002, the President, on behalf of the Office of Homeland Security,
announced a Homeland Security Strategy. It had much detail about border security,
domestic counterterrorism, and protection of critical infrastructures, but there
was essentially no military content.
“The United States is working with more than 90 countries to disrupt and
defeat terror networks,” Bush said in a radio address to the nation in
November 2002. “So far we have frozen more than $113 million in terrorist
assets. ... We’ve cracked down on charities that were exploiting American
compassion to fund terrorists. ... We’ve deployed troops to train forces
in the Philippines and Yemen, the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, and other
nations where terrorists have gathered. ... To win the war on terror, we’re
also opposing the growing threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands
of outlaw regimes.”
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Guard Over Cities. Operation Noble Eagle air patrols began the day of the Sept. 11 attacks. Military aircraft, most from the Air National Guard, flew around the clock above New York, Washington (shown here), and 20 other cities. |
National Security Strategy
Bush finally sent his first National Security Strategy to Congress in September
2002. It was less comprehensive than previous strategy documents had been, focusing
almost entirely on terrorism and rogue nations.
In a signed preface, Bush said, “The gravest danger our nation faces lies
at the crossroads of radicalism and technology,” weapons of mass destruction
in reckless and irresponsible hands.
The strategy repeated the doctrine of pre-emption: “Given the goals of
rogue states and terrorists, the United States can no longer solely rely on
a reactive posture as we have in the past. The inability to deter a potential
attacker, the immediacy of today’s threats, and the magnitude of potential
harm that could be caused by our adversaries’ choice of weapons do not
permit that option. We cannot let our enemies strike first.”
Pre-emption is also necessary because of the way adversaries regard weapons
of mass destruction: “In the Cold War, weapons of mass destruction were
considered weapons of last resort. ... Today, our enemies see weapons of mass
destruction as weapons of choice” and “their best means of overcoming
the conventional superiority of the United States.”
The strategy said that pre-emption would not be automatic. “The United
States will not use force in all cases to pre-empt emerging threats,” but
“cannot remain idle while dangers gather.”
The great emphasis on multilateralism that characterized the Clinton strategy
was gone. “While the United States will constantly strive to enlist the
support of the international community, we will not hesitate to act alone, if
necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting pre-emptively against
such terrorists,” the new strategy said.
It confirmed Rumsfeld’s “Assure, Dissuade, Deter, Defeat” defense
strategy and called specifically for “developing assets such as advanced
remote sensing, long-range precision strike capabilities, and transformed maneuver
and expeditionary forces.” It cited the need “to defend the homeland,
conduct information operations, ensure US access to distant theaters, and protect
critical US infrastructure and assets in outer space.”
Bush’s strategy did not address peacekeeping or nation-building missions,
which had been recurring themes in the election campaign. In July 2002, the
United States had voted in favor of a UN resolution extending the Stabilization
Force in Bosnia for another year. By the end of the year, the Pentagon was planning
a “reconstruction” mission in Afghanistan.
In December, the White House announced a more detailed strategy for dealing
with weapons of mass destruction. “The United States will continue to make
clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force—including
through resort to all of our options—to the use of WMD against the United
States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies.”
According to the Washington Post, the classified version of this document authorizes
pre-emptive strikes on states or terrorist groups that are close to obtaining
weapons of mass destruction or long-range missiles to deliver them. The Post
quoted a “participant” in development of the strategy as saying it
is premised on a view that “traditional nonproliferation has failed, and
now we’re going into active interdiction.”
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Flash Point East. A member of USAF security forces guards the flight line in South Korea. At the start of 2003, tension flared anew on the peninsula as North Korea threatened a nuclear breakout. |
Congress and UN Votes
Under pressure to build a broader consensus, Bush said he would seek Congressional
authorization before taking any military action against Iraq.
He also issued a challenge to the United Nations. “All the world now faces
a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment,” he said
in a speech to the General Assembly. “Are Security Council resolutions
to be honored and enforced or cast aside without consequence? Will the United
Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?”
Bush asked Congress for unlimited authority to take action against Iraq without
further consultation or approval.
Bush’s most stalwart ally at this difficult time was British Prime Minister
Tony Blair, who said that Britain was committed to disarming Iraq, “one
way or another.”
Bush also drew support from the Washington Post, which chastised critics who
acknowledged that nuclear weapons in Saddam Hussein’s hands would be a
deadly and intolerable threat, yet were opposed to action. In an editorial,
the Post said that “one striking feature of the criticism of President
Bush’s Iraq policy is the absence of suggested alternatives.”
Bush got the votes he wanted.
On Oct. 10, Congress authorized the use of military force against Iraq, declaring
that “the President is authorized to use the armed forces of the United
States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to (1) defend
the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed
by Iraq; and (2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions
regarding Iraq.”
The majority of the vote was bigger (296–133 in the House, 77–23
in the Senate) than the Gulf War resolution Bush’s father had gotten in
1991, and the authority was broader. The Iraq resolution required Bush to inform
Congress within 48 hours if he used the authority; the Gulf War resolution had
required his father to inform Congress before the war began.
On Nov. 8, the United Nations Security Council adopted, 15–0, a resolution
ordering Iraq to disarm and warning that this is its “final opportunity”
to do so. Obtaining the vote required the United States to make some concessions,
including the possibility that Saddam’s regime might survive if it cooperated,
but Bush said he was satisfied.
Some of Bush’s critics saw it as a triumph for international opinion,
giving inspections a chance to succeed. They apparently forgot that Iraq was
not open to inspections until Bush pushed the issue.
“We would not have inspectors going into Iraq today except for the single
fact that there is a possibility of the use of force to require that that country
disarm,” Rumsfeld said.
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Guidelines for Use of Force
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Under what circumstances should US armed forces be committed to combat?
Where should the threshold of war be set? In 1984, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger announced a series of
tests that became known as the Weinberger Doctrine. He said that troops
would not be committed to combat unless a vital national interest was
at stake and until other options were exhausted. Political and military
objectives should be clearly defined and achievable. If we went to war,
it must be with sufficient force and a determination to win. There should
be “some reasonable assurance” of support from the American
public and Congress. The Weinberger Doctrine was revoked by Clinton’s first Secretary
of Defense, Les Aspin, who disparaged what he called the “All-or-Nothing”
school of military employment. Military force was often used for “sending
messages” and other limited objectives. The dividing line between peace and war blurred. Commenting on an operation
in 1998, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said, “We are talking
about using military force, but we are not talking about war. That is
an important distinction.” Soon after he became Secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld wrote down
his guidelines for committing US armed forces to combat, updating the
paper from time to time. When the existence of his memorandum was discovered
and disclosed in October 2002 by the New York Times, Rumsfeld passed out
copies of the latest version, dated March 2001, to the press. |
Obviously, Rumsfeld had studied the Weinberger Doctrine of 1984 as well
as the open-ended, poorly defined, often tentative employment of military
force during the Clinton years. Rumsfeld’s guidelines steered a middle course, more flexible than Weinberger’s list, but with a reasoned consideration, lacking in the limited engagements of the 1990s, of when and how the United States would commit forces to combat. |
The Ultimate Question
During the early months of the war on terrorism, it was popular to say that
wars of the future would be of the Afghanistan variety, against primitive adversaries
who might have no borders or military forces in uniform.
Within the year, though, there loomed the prospect of a major theater conflict
in Iraq. Even the war on terrorism relies on global projection of military power,
striking at the enemy’s training camps and sanctuaries.
The war on terrorism is in addition to, not instead of, the missions and requirements
that existed before.
The underfunding of the 1990s left the Pentagon in a deep hole, in which it
was still struggling when the war on terror added $30 million a day to expenses.
In constant dollars (adjusted for inflation), the proposed 2003 defense budget
was $41.4 billion above the previous year’s. It was billed, rightly, as
the largest increase since the 1980s. However, of the total increase, some $24
billion—almost 60 percent of it—was allocated to the war on terrorism,
homeland security, increased air patrols over the continental United States,
and related matters. The amount left over for new ventures, including transformation,
was not that much.
Bush’s doctrine and strategy hold together conceptually. The ultimate test may be whether he can fund them.
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The Can Opener. In early 1991, the US established a no-fly zone (the future Northern Watch) in the airspace north of 36 degrees N latitude. F-16CJs such as this one fly out of Turkey and frequently engage Iraqi SAM systems. |