Stability Operations in Strategic Perspective: A Skeptical View

Abstract

Because this article is friendly to much of the content of the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review Report (QDR), it will pull no punches in offering constructive criticism. (1) The subject of stability (and reconstruction) operations will be discussed explicitly, but it should be understood that this subject has to be regarded as a highly dependent variable. Stability operations, the demand for them and the provision of new capabilities to perform them well, are the downstream product of larger decisions on foreign policy and strategy. We can pick one of two rival judgments on the QDR and its novel endorsement of the need for competence in irregular warfare and postwar stability operations. On the one hand, we can choose to see the QDR's thrust toward countering irregular and asymmetric foes, and in favor of developing the skills to enhance social and political stability, as an overdue course correction in American policy and strategy. On the other hand, we may prefer to be less generous and instead suggest that the vision in the QDR amounts to a gross overreaction to the problems most characteristic of the present day. This is the sin of presentism. The Defense Department has peered out through the fog of the future to 2025 and has seen--guess what?--a future that is very much like today. We are warned to expect surprises and we are told repeatedly that ours is an era of uncertainty, but nonetheless no reader could possibly miss the report's central message on threats. The perils of the near- to medium-term future will be largely irregular. We dare to ask, Is this likely to be true? and, even if it is true, should it imply for US national security policy? I suggest that a QDR composed at the current juncture of events in Iraq and Afghanistan is not entirely to be trusted as a source of balanced guidance for the future. But, to be fair, no analysis can escape influence by the major preoccupation of its drafters. That granted, the QDR does suffer from a heavy, indeed an unduly heavy, burden of presentism. That is to say, it is seeing the future with terms of reference that derive excessively from today. What is more, I am concerned about the number and significance of truly major political and strategic assumptions that are simply passed over in silence. The Argument This article comprises an eight-point argument that presents both a strategic perspective and, as promised in the subtitle, a skeptical view of some of the more vital assumptions that appear to be shaping policy and strategy today. As an aid to comprehension, as well as an encouragement to economy in explanation and justification, the article will proceed from an itemization and brief explanation of the elements of the argument to their discussion in greater detail. The eight points are these: * The United States is the global hegemon at present, by default we must add. (2) This hegemony is real, but it is nonetheless only partial, it is context-specific, and it is certain to be challenged. * As the hegemonic, world-ordering power, America's competence, strengths, and reputation or prestige are of vital importance for global stability. International order cannot afford its principal guardian to make major errors in statecraft or strategy. * America's national ideology, which is an integral part of its culture, does not travel as well as many Americans believe. The issue is not the merit in the ideology, but rather the power of that ideology to misguide national security policy. * The American of war reflects American society, while the American armed forces reflect American foreign policy demands, actual, anticipated, and plausibly possible. It remains to be demonstrated whether or not the United States can transform its armed forces so that they will excel in the conduct of irregular warfare. A malign combination of poor foreign policy choices, a public culture or ideology that is inherently contestable abroad rather than revealed universal truth, and a deeply ingrained traditional way of war, must raise serious questions as to feasibility. …