What the QDR Ought to Say about Landpower

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) will have been completed as of this writing, but will not yet have been published. Facing new strategic priorities and mounting fiscal pressures, it is anticipated that capacity or size of American landpower will be substantially reduced: Army's end strength could be decremented to a post-World War II low of just 420,000 to 450,000 soldiers. This article considers implications of such reductions. ********** The US Department of Defense (DOD) faces numerous challenges today as it updates US defense strategy in light of a dynamic security environment and significant resource constraints. The QDR affords landpower strategists an excellent opportunity to step back and think about future. As former Pentagon strategist Shawn Brimley wrote, With wars ending, budgets declining, technology proliferating, and other powers rising, a real of opportunity to reshape US defense strategy has opened for first time since end of Cold War. (1) However, that window also brings with it great risk. Documents like National Intelligence Council's 2030 report or Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Operating Environment suggest United States must have balanced and versatile forces able to accomplish a wide variety of missions. Urgency is needed to create greater Joint adaptability and versatility to cope with uncertainty and complexity. Although niche capabilities will still be needed, a balanced force design is basis for adaptation and operational flexibility. Landpower and Joint Force 2020 Landpower's role in 21st century was studied by a task force commissioned by US Army, US Marine Corps, and Special Operations Command. This effort produced a concept paper delineating what landpower brings to fight, and emphasizes achieving influence in human domain and winning clash of wills inherent in human conflict. (2) It argues, persuasively, that the importance of conflict prevention and ability to shape conditions in regions to maintain stability through actions highly focused on human factors is also rising in significance. (3) The interplay of human and moral factors in war is something Clausewitz stressed, but which modern strategists might deemphasize or inadvertently overlook. (4) The role of landpower is questioned in some quarters: it is equated to protracted counterinsurgency tasks and portrayed as expensive. Some critics think of Arm), and Marines solely in terms of current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and hope to opt out of such messianic missions and nation-building tasks. But after a decade of irregular war, contributions made by Army, Marines, and Special Operations Forces (SOF) should not be narrowly defined by last decade or exaggerated concerns about endless wars. American landpower capabilities have been broadened and deepened by a decade of sacrifice and adaptation. The tremendous learning curve and combat experience of last decade has produced a very flexible force, and United States must retain best of that leadership, experience, and lessons. We should not seek to refight last war, nor should we recoil from a ruthlessly realistic appreciation for world as it is rather than what we hope it may become. As noted by Major General H. R. McMaster: ... in Afghanistan and Iraq, planning did not account for adaptability and initiatives by enemy. American forces, deployed initially in insufficient numbers to keep pace with evolution of those conflicts, struggled to maintain security. The lesson: The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, like all wars, were contests of will that unleashed dynamics that made future events impossible to predict. Fortunately, American forces adapted. (5) The US military has not yet studied or drawn adequate lessons about factors that facilitated this adaptation. …