Blast from my past: "The American Way of War" (2003)

 
 

The American Way of War

by Arthur K. Cebrowski & Thomas P.M. Barnett

British Army Review, Spring 2003, pp.39-40;
reprinted with permission

U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, January 2003, pp. 42-43;
reprinted with permission

The effort to identify and characterize the American Way of War is—in many ways—an attempt to understand how U.S. warfare evolves once freed from the bilateral and all-consuming competition with the Soviet Union. In other words, left to our own devices to manage a complex and constantly changing global security environment, how does this country choose to wage war?

By our reckoning, the United States—and the world—stands at a historical creation point similar to the immediate post-World War II years. Across the 1990s global rule sets became seriously misaligned, with economics racing ahead of politics (as evidenced by current corporate scandals) and technology racing ahead of security (e.g., the rise of transnational terrorists exploiting globalization’s growing network connectivity). Now it is time to play catch up, as we did in the early Cold War years, with the U.S. military once again serving as an instrument of rule-set exportation through the global war on terrorism.

Can we as a nation go overboard in this endeavor and destabilize globalization in the process? Only if we forget who we are and what we represent to the world: democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. That is why it is so crucial for us to understand this nation’s particular approach to waging war, taking into account all its operational complexity and moral imperatives. To that end, here are our summary observations concerning the emerging American Way of War.

The Networking of American Warfare

Network-centric warfare combines the four military branches into a seamless, joint warfighting force. It is a new form of warfare that capitalizes on the trust we place in our junior and noncommissioned officers: as information moves down echelon, so does combat power, meaning smaller joint force packages wield greater combat power. Network-centric warfare generates new and extraordinary levels of operational efficiency. It enables and leverages new military capabilities while allowing the United States to use  traditional capabilities more discretely and in new venues (e.g., strikes, not battles). This is allowing the U.S. military to downshift effectively over time from system-level wars (the Cold War and its World War III scenarios) to state-on-state wars (Iraq and Korea major theater wars/scenarios) to the emerging wars fought largely against groups of individuals (Taliban take-down, rolling up the al Qaeda network).

In short, the rise of asymmetrical warfare is largely our own creation. We are creating the mismatch in means as we increasingly extend the reach of our warfighting machine down the range of conflict—past the peer competitor, past the rogue nation-state, right down to individual enemy combatants. This constitutes in itself an amazing transformation of the American Way of War over the past generation. 

The Inevitability of American Warfare

There is an enormous literature about how everything connected with warfare is accelerating—technological advances, technology proliferation, the pace of events on the battlefield. But it is not only the speed of the U.S. response to aggression that matters; the inevitability, even unstoppability, of our power projection once we choose to employ it is critical as well. Again, the rise of antiaccess strategies by our opponents is largely our own creation, as we try to maintain a capacity to reverse significant acts of aggression within a security system we seek to administer like an empire, but one based on shared values rather than imposed order.

Over time, it is a “fast” U.S. military establishment the advanced world fears most: reckless, trigger-happy, and prone to unilateralism. An inevitable military Leviathan, on the other hand, is what the global system needs most: decisive in its power projection, precise in its targeted effects, and thorough in its multilateralism. 

The Speed of American Warfare

The decision to go to war must never be quick, but a defining characteristic of the American Way of War is the growing ability of U.S. forces to execute operations with unprecedented speed. This is not so much speed of response as speed within the response. In other words, we may choose our punches with great care (strategy), only to unleash them with blinding speed (operations, tactics). Most of this speed comes from increased battlespace transparency, although the speed of platforms remains crucial to protecting our personnel.

U.S. operations increasingly resemble hockey superstar Wayne Gretsky’s “speed” on the ice. Never the fastest skater, Gretsky concentrated less on skating to where the puck was and more on skating to where the puck would be. The goal of the common operational picture within network-centric warfare speaks to this sort of speed: not trying to be everywhere all the time, but to be exactly where you need to be exactly when you need to be there.

The Precision of American Warfare

It is from this information-driven speed that another key attribute of the American Way of War emerges: the increasing precision of our operational effects. Trapped within the distant, abstract near-peer attrition scenarios still favored by some within the Pentagon, this sort of operational precision always risked seeming pointless. The objective of precision is not the weapons effect, but the enabling of our political objectives—effects-based operations. In the increasingly transparent battle space, the speed and access of our networked forces open the way to profoundly altering initial conditions of conflict, developing high rates of change that cannot be outpaced, and sharply narrowing an enemy’s strategic choices.

When downshifted by the global war on terrorism, such effects-based operational capabilities appear both more credible  and more useful, primarily because in a war fought largely against individuals, the capacity for discrete applications of military power is prized most of all—likewise for focused, preemptive strikes against rogue states enabled by weapons of mass destruction.

The Transformation of American Warfare

Pulling together the major conceptual threads of the emerging international security environment, one is led to the conclusion that even when homeland security is the principle objective, the preferred U.S. military method is forward deterrence and strike operations. As a matter of effectiveness, cost, and moral preference, operations will have to shift from being reactive (i.e., retaliatory and punitive) to being largely preventative. Forward presence therefore will be valued more than strategic deployment from home, necessitating a major force posture shift from the current condition where 80%-plus of the force is U.S. based. Accordingly, the emerging American Way of War speaks to a future military force that features more:

• Special operations-like forces whose easier insertion and extensive local knowledge will give them greater power and utility than large formations deploying from remote locations
• Forces capable of applying information-age techniques and technologies to urban warfare, else we will not deny the enemy his sanctuary
• Surveillance-oriented forces to counter weapons of mass destruction, else unambiguous warning will come too late
• Concepts of “jointness” that extend down through the tactical level of war
• Interagency capabilities for nation building and constabulary operations, lest our elite forces get stuck in one place when needed in another
• Adjustments in force structure and posture in consideration of the growing homeland security roles of the Coast Guard, the National Guard, the Air National Guard, and the Reserves.

The ultimate attribute of the emerging American Way of War is the superempowerment of the war fighter—whether on the ground, in the air, or at sea. As network-centric warfare empowers individual servicemen and women, and as we increasingly face an international security environment where rogue individuals, be they leaders of “evil states” or “evil networks,” pose the toughest challenges, eventually the application of our military power will mirror the dominant threat to a significant degree. In other words, we morph into a military of superempowered individuals fighting wars against superempowered individuals. In this manner, the American Way of War moves the military toward an embrace of a more sharply focused global cop role: we increasingly specialize in neutralizing bad people who do bad things.

Adding these new responsibilities to the U.S. military is not only a natural development but a positive one, for it is the United States’ continued  success in deterring global war and obsolescing state-on-state war that now allows us to begin tackling the far thornier issues of transnational threats and subnational conflicts—the battlegrounds on which this global war on terrorism will be won.

Admiral Cebrowski serves as Director, Office of Force Transformation, Office of the Secretary of Defense. Dr. Barnett, a Naval War College professor, serves as the Office of Force Transformation’s assistant for strategic futures. The authors are indebted to Henry Gaffney, Colonel Pat Garrett, U.S. Marine Corps, and Bradd Hayes for their input.

Blast from my past: "Asia: The Military-Market Link" (2002)

Asia: The Military-Market Link

by

Thomas P.M. Barnett

China could be the world's largest auto market by 2020, increasing its oil needs by 40%.  The Pentagon and Wall Street must understand their interrelationship: economic and political stability are crucial to reducing energy market risk.

COPYRIGHT: The U.S. Naval Institute, 2002 (January  issue, pp. 53-56); reprinted with permission

There is a real push within the Department of the Navy to enunciate the presumed linkage between the Navy’s worldwide operations and economic globalization. Some of this analytic effort is dismissed as pouring old wine into new wineskins, because many Navy-as-the-glue-of-globalization formulations sound an awful lot like the old bromides about the “Navy as the glue of Asia.” Nice work if you can get it, but given the relative lack of naval crisis response in Asia since the end of the Vietnam War, it is a hard story to sell.

But all that is about to change, if you believe the Department of Energy’s stunning projections of Asia’s growing energy consumption over the next 20 years.1 Because to ensure the region’s much-anticipated economic maturation, a lot of good things must occur over the next two decades in both Asia and the Middle East—and across all paths in between.2 In short, if you want a Pacific Century, you’ll need a U.S. Pacific Fleet—strong in numbers and forward deployed.

Asian Energy: A Globalization Decalogue

As the director of a long-running Naval War College project (NewRuleSets.Project) on how globalization alters definitions of international security, I have had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with Wall Street executives and regional security experts (both military and civilian) discussing Asia’s future economic and political development.3 The following decalogue distills the essential rule sets our project has identified concerning Asia’s energy future.4

1. The Global Energy Market Has the Necessary Resources.

Asia as a whole currently uses about as much energy as the United States, or almost 100 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu).5 By 2020, however, Asia will roughly double its energy consumption while U.S. consumption rises just more than 25%. Asia’s likely increases are significant no matter what the energy category:

• Oil, 88%
• Natural gas, 191%
• Coal, 97%
• Nuclear power, 87% when Japan is included, 178% when it is not
• Hydroelectricity and other renewables, 109%.

This is a genuine changing of the guard in the global marketplace—a shifting of the world’s demand center. Today, North America accounts for just under a third of the world’s energy consumption, with Asia second at 24%. Within one generation, those two regions will swap both global rankings and percentage shares (see chart).

The good news is that there’s plenty of fossil fuel to go around. Confirmed oil reserves have jumped almost two-thirds over the past 20 years, according to the Department of Energy, while natural gas reserves have roughly doubled. Our best estimates on coal say we have enough for the next two centuries. So supply is not the issue, and neither is demand, leaving only the question of moving the energy from those who have it to those who need it—and therein lies the rub. 

2. But No Stability, No Market.

Asia comes close to self-sufficiency only in coal, with Australia, China, India, and Indonesia the big producers. All told, Asia self-supplies on coal to the tune of 97%, a standard it will maintain through 2020. That is important, because virtually all of the global growth in coal use over the next generation will happen in Asia, mostly in China and India.

Natural gas is a far different story. In 2001 Asia used around 10 trillion cubic feet, with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan representing the lion’s share of consumption. The trick is this: Asia’s demand for natural gas will skyrocket to perhaps 25 trillion cubic feet by 2020, with the vast bulk of the increase occurring outside of that trio. So if those three countries already buy what’s available in-region, that means the rest of Asia will have to go elsewhere—namely, the former Soviet Union (Russia, with 33% of the world total) and the Middle East (Iran, with 16%).

Finally, even though oil will decline as a percentage share for Asia as a whole over the coming years, absolute demand will grow by leaps and bounds. Asia currently burns about as much oil as the United States, or roughly 20 million barrels per day (mbd). Since oil is mostly about transportation nowadays, and Asia is looking at a quintupling of its car fleet by 2020, there is a huge swag placed on this projection. The Department of Energy’s latest forecast is roughly 36 mbd, but even that means Asia as a whole has to import an additional 12 mbd from out of region, or roughly double what it imports today from the Persian Gulf region.6

Asia already buys roughly two-thirds of all the oil produced in the Persian Gulf, and by 2010 that share will rise to approximately three-quarters.7 Meanwhile, the West’s share of Gulf oil will drop from just under a quarter today to just over a tenth in 2010. Strategic upshot? The two most anti-Western corners of the globe are inexorably coming together over energy and money. Increasingly, the Middle East becomes dependent on economic stability in Asia, and Asia becomes dependent on political-military stability in the Gulf. If either side of that equation fails, the energy market is put at risk.

3. No Growth, No Stability. 

As a middle class develops in Asian countries, a significant portion of the global population is being rapidly promoted from an 18th- or 19th-century lifestyle into a 20th- or even 21st-century consumption pattern. If international investors decide to take it all away one afternoon in a flurry of currency attacks and capital flight, the struggling segment of the population that suddenly finds itself expelled from the would-be middle class is likely to get awfully upset.

4. No Resources, No Growth. 

Asia cannot grow without a huge influx of out-of-area energy resources. The quintupling of cars is impressive enough, when you consider that General Motors predicts China will be the world’s largest car market in 2020.8 But even more stunning will be the 250% increase in electricity consumption (300% in China), which will be generated mostly by coal and, increasingly, natural gas. Put those two together and we are talking about an Asia that must open up to the outside world to a degree unprecedented in modern history.

5. No Infrastructure, No Resources. 

Asia’s infrastructure requirements over the next two decades are unprecedented. The combination of a doubling in energy consumption and rapid rises in population, urbanization, and water usage will damage further an already battered regional ecosystem, placing great political pressures on national governments to limit the pollution associated with energy production.

In Asia, the push for energy is really a push for infrastructure, which comes in three forms:

• For the near term, the vast majority of natural gas that flows into Asia will arrive in a liquid form on ships. That means port facilities on both ends of the conduit, plus liquefaction plants on the supplier’s end and regasification plants on the buyer’s end.
• Over the longer haul, pipelines by both land and sea become the answer to meeting the rising demand.
• Finally, there is the domestic infrastructure required to pipe all that gas to the final consumers.

None of this comes cheaply, and as the recent history of regional electricity development makes clear, lots of outside money is required.9

6. No Money, No Infrastructure.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is the most significant scenario variable for Asia’s energy future. Asia’s energy infrastructure requirements easily will top $1 trillion by 2020, according to many estimates. Such numbers overwhelm the region’s ability to self-finance, and that means Asia will have to open up its energy generation and distribution markets to far more joint or foreign ownership. If it seems inevitable that Asia must turn to the former Soviet Union and the Middle East for energy in the coming decades, it is just as inevitable that it must turn to the West for the money to finance this trade.

7. No Rules, No Money.

Many on Wall Street voice the opinion that Asia has not sufficiently cleaned up its act as a result of the 1997–1998 financial crisis, referring primarily to internationally accepted accounting practices in the financial and corporate sectors.10 Another problem with Asia’s energy investment climate is the current mix of private-sector investments and public-sector decision making. In most Asian economies, the government still plays far too large a role as far as Western financiers are concerned. As long as rule sets lag behind, the rise of private-sector market makers is delayed, for firm rules of play are required before deregulation of state-run energy markets can proceed.

8. No Security, No Rules.

Foreign direct investment does not occur in a vacuum. Long-term certainty is the greatest attraction a country can offer to outside investors, whereas war and political-military instability (especially leftist revolutions) are the best methods to scare them away. Developing Asia readily presents a handful of potential and/or existing security trouble spots that could negatively affect the region’s FDI climate in significant ways.

9. No Leviathan, No Security.

Many international experts agree that Asia’s current security situation belongs to what Thomas Friedman calls the “olive tree” world, where backward tribes fight over little bits of land, while rising economic powerhouses clearly join the “Lexus” world, producing many of the global economy’s best high-end technology products.11

In this region there remains a viable long-term market for the services of an outside Leviathan—namely, the United States. The United States enjoys healthier security relationships with virtually every Asian government than any two governments there enjoy with one another. While it is easy to deride the notion of a “four-star foreign policy,” there is little doubt that the commander-in-chief of U.S. Pacific Command plays a unique role in working the security arrangements that underpin the region’s strong record of structural stability over the past quarter century.12 Our forward presence both reassures local governments and obviates their need for larger military hedges. Our presence is a moneymaker on two fronts: they spend less on defense and more on development (the ultimate defense), and FDI is encouraged, however subtly.

10. No U.S. Navy, No Leviathan.

The U.S. government—and the U.S. Navy in particular—faces a far more complex strategic environment in the 21st century than it did during the Cold War, whether or not it yet realizes the change: our national security interests in the Persian Gulf, while increasingly important for the global economy, no longer hold the same immediate importance to our national economy. In effect, U.S. naval presence in Asia is becoming far less an expression of our nation’s forward presence than an “exporting” of security to the global marketplace. In that regard, we truly do move into the Leviathan category, for the “product” we provide is increasingly a collective good less directly tied to our particularistic national interests and far more intimately wrapped up with our global responsibilities.

And in the end, this is a pretty good deal. We trade little pieces of paper (our currency, in the form of a trade deficit) for Asia’s amazing array of products and services. We are smart enough to know this is a patently unfair deal unless we offer something of great value along with those little pieces of paper. That product is a strong U.S. Pacific Fleet, which squares the transaction nicely.

Understanding the Military-Market Connection

The collapse of the Soviet bloc and its long-standing challenge of the Western economic rule set made possible a global rule set for how military power buttresses and enables economic growth and stability. For the first time in human history we have a true global military Leviathan in the form of the U.S. military, and no peer competitor in sight—not even a coherent alternative economic philosophy (although bin Laden’s anti-Westernization resonates with those who fear globalization as a form of forced Americanization). This unparalleled moment in global history both allows and compels the United States to better understand the national security-market nexus.

How do we define this yin-yang relationship between business and the military? First we speak of stability, which flows from national security, and then we speak of transparency, which is both demanded and engendered by free markets. These two underlying pillars form the basis of the single global rule set that now defines the era of globalization. Within those two pillars, the United States plays a crucial role:

• The U.S. government, through the U.S. military, supplies the lion’s share of system stability through its Leviathan-like status as the world’s sole military superpower.
• U.S. financial markets, which lead the way in fostering the emergence of a global equities market, play the leading role in spreading the gospel of transparency—any country’s best defense against the sort of financial currency crises that have erupted periodically over the past decade (Mexico 1994, Asia 1997, Russia 1998, Brazil 1999, Turkey 2001).

It therefore is essential that the Pentagon and Wall Street come to better understand their interrelationships across the global economy. Uncovering and better understanding this fundamental relationship is especially important because the vast majority of the time the security and financial communities operate in oblivious indifference to one another. Ultimately, however, the global economy operates on trust, which is based on certainty, which in turn comes from the effective processing of risk.

In the end, the national security and financial establishments are in the same fundamental business: the effective processing of international risk. Invariably, these two problem sets merge in the historical process that is economic globalization. Understanding the military-market connection isn’t just good business, it’s good national security strategy. Bin Laden understood this connection when he selected the World Trade Center and the Pentagon for his targets. We ignore his logic at our peril.

1. See the Energy Information Administration’s International Energy Outlook 2001, DOE/EIA-0484(2001), March 2001, found at www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/index.html.

2. For the purposes of this article I define Asia as extending from Afghanistan to Japan, but not including Australia and New Zealand (Oceania), although I identify Australia as an in-region supplier of energy because of its proximity.

3. The NewRuleSets.Project is a multiyear research effort designed to explore how globalization and the rise of the new economy are altering the basic “rules of the road” in the international security environment, with special reference to how these changes may redefine the U.S. Navy’s historical role as security enabler of U.S. commercial network ties with the world. The project is hosted by the online securities broker-dealer firm eSpeed (an affiliate of Cantor Fitzgerald LP) and involves personnel from the Decision Strategies Department of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies. Adm. William Flanagan, USN (Ret.), and Dr. Philip Ginsberg, of Cantor Fitzgerald (senior managing director and executive vice president, respectively), serve as informal advisors to the project, actively participating in all planning and design. The first three joint Wall Street-Naval War College workshops in the series involved energy, foreign direct investment, and the environment in Asia. Follow-on events are planned for food and water, information technology, and human capital. All research products relating to this effort are found at www.nwc.navy.mil/newrulesets. 

4. All the energy data presented in the decalogue, unless otherwise specified, comes from the Department of Energy’s International Energy Outlook 2001.

5. A good rule of thumb for thinking about quadrillion Btu is that you can take the annual number for a region, divide it by two, and get the rough equivalent in millions of barrels of oil per day the region would need to burn if it was achieving that entire energy amount by oil alone. For example, North America used 116 quadrillion Btu in 1999, which would equate to 58 million barrels of oil per day (mbd) if that entire amount was achieved by oil alone. For point of comparison, the United States currently uses about 20 mbd, importing roughly half that number. 

6. For an excellent exploration of this, see Daniel Yergin, Dennis Eklof, and Jefferson Edwards, “Fueling Asia’s Recovery,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 1998, pp. 34–50. 

7. The Middle East currently accounts for roughly 90% of all Asian oil imports; on this see Fereidun Fesharaki, “Energy and Asian Security Nexus,” Journal of International Affairs, Fall 1999, p. 97.

8. Cited in Clay Chandler, “GM’s China Bet Hits Snag: WTO (Car Shoppers Await Discount from Trade Deal),” The Washington Post, 10 May 2000, p. E1.

9. See “Foreign Investment in the Electricity Sectors of Asia and South America,” International Energy Outlook 2000, pp. 120–21. 

10. On this, see Andreas Kluth, “A Survey of Asian Business: In Praise of Rules,” The Economist, 7 April 2001, pp. 1–18 (insert).

11. Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1999).

12. For an excellent exploration of this concept, see Dana Priest, “A Four-Star Foreign Policy? U.S. Commanders Wield Rising Clout, Autonomy,” The Washington Post, 28 September 2000, p. A1. See also the second and third articles in the series (29–30 September). 

Dr. Barnett is a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, currently serving as the Assistant for Strategic Futures in the Office of Force Transformation within the Office of the Secretary of Defense. 

Blast from my past: "Globalization Gets a Bodyguard" (2001)

Globalization Gets a Bodyguard

by

Thomas P.M. Barnett and Henry H. Gaffney, Jr.

Definitions of U.S. national security never will be the same after 11 September 2001.  Americans now have a costly bodyguard in the form of a Homeland Security Council which could impact globalization on many fronts.

COPYRIGHT: The U.S. Naval Institute, 2001 (November  issue, pp. 50-53); reprinted with permission

To the vast majority of the world, the United States represents the leading edge of globalization—a harbinger of a future where efficient markets, political pluralism, and individual choice reign supreme. Moreover, as the new rules of this new era emerge and governments step in to regulate the markets, the United States (especially its Treasury Department) plays chief rule-maker. In the meantime, the U.S. military has remained strong, saving most countries the trouble of having to finance big or expeditionary militaries, leading the coalitions that tidy up those conflicts on the edges of globalization, and containing the trouble-makers who threaten to disrupt it.

Think about what an unprecedented combination that is: the world’s most open society, most vibrant economy, and strongest military power. And the United States had maintained a careful, stable balance among those elements.

Then consider how much has changed as a result of 11 September:

• The rear admiral and pilots of the Enterprise (CVN-65) Battle Group operating in the Arabian Sea ask reporters not to use their names for fear that such publicity might endanger their families.
• The Coast Guard conducts its largest port defense operations since World War II.
• National Guard personnel stand watch in every major domestic airport.
• Debates rage in the Pentagon and in Congress about creating a “combat command”—“CinCAmerica”—to fight terrorism within our borders, in  support of the domestic agencies.
• Military intelligence agencies poll Hollywood screenwriters for their best ideas on where and how terrorists will strike next.

But most telling of all, American citizens just got a permanent bodyguard in the form of a Homeland Security Council. Not a military escort but a civilian bodyguard, the centrality of this new political entity will indicate how the United States may balance homeland introspection with world interactions in the coming years.

On the one hand, Osama bin Laden has challenged the United States to retreat from the world (or at least from his world, which stretches from Sierra Leone to the Sulu Archipelago). On the other hand, we have found a world community beyond unilateralism.

Osama's Real Victory

Until 11 September, there was a clear consensus in this country that “national security” meant the Defense Department’s four military branches operating in forward deployments around the world, or being ready to do so. “Defense” was an “over there” concept, something we paid military professionals to perform overseas. The forces were deployed or “expeditionary,” not homeland defense forces. Even missile defense was no longer to be simply “national,” but worldwide.

Following the September terrorist attacks, we now have a dual definition of national security, largely because our confidence concerning the ability of our deployed and expeditionary forces to defend the United States forward has been shattered.

DoD covered both the forward and homeland defense portfolios during the Cold War by assuring our domestic strategic security vis-à-vis Soviet missiles while containing Soviet bloc expansion around the world with our forward-deployed forces. But that world is gone. Our forward-deployed military was proven essentially irrelevant when it came to defending our strategic security on 11 September. Yes, DoD will hunt down bin Laden in Afghanistan, and other agencies and countries ultimately will roll up bin Laden’s terrorist network overseas. But as far as this country’s domestic strategic security is concerned, the Pentagon has just been demoted to subcontractor to the Homeland Security authority.

That stunning turn of events represents Osama bin Laden’s real victory over the United States and its regular military establishment—one that no amount of well-aimed cruise missiles can erase.

Downstream Effects from 9/11

As anyone in the private security business will tell you, bodyguards cost plenty. As a cost of doing the nation’s business, this charge will be too large for state and local governments to absorb, signaling an expansion of federal power and spending not seen since Franklin Roosevelt declared, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Homeland security will grow—as a concept, strategy, bureaucracy, and budget—in direct proportion to our society’s ballooning fear concerning terrorism. George W. Bush cannot win this “new war”—or a second term—merely by producing bin Laden’s head. He can only prevail in this strategic struggle by restoring Americans’ sense of personal security.

Up to now, Americans have largely looked after themselves for personal security, augmenting our reasonably robust local police structure by shelling out their own dollars for personal weapons, home-security systems, gated communities, and the like. But again, bin Laden’s stunning strike has merged definitions of strategic and personal security, and that conflation will long be felt in the Congress’s willingness to redirect federal discretionary spending toward restoring our collective personal security and away from all this international engagement we had become accustomed to during the Cold War and in the decade after it.

When President Bush announced the homeland security entity, it was first described as just an “office,” but soon we learned it would grow into a “council” on a par with the National Security Council. How much more authority might it gain, and what budgetary resources will it command?

Clearly this will be an event-driven process largely beyond DoD’s control. Another 5,000 dead, say, in Chicago or Los Angeles, and we shortly will have a Homeland Security Agency or even a Department that absorbs command of elements of DoD—an interior ministry like many other countries have.

After 11 September, this pathway is conceivable, and in many ways, it may be inevitable given the opportunities for terrorists to infiltrate the United States in this globalization era. At the very least, it is a greater long-term likelihood than Governor Tom Ridge ending up as just another “drug czar.” That is because our continued consumption of narcotics threatens no one in the world except ourselves, whereas the terrorists want to kill Americans to drive us out of the huge Islamic world they dream of someday running like the Taliban’s Afghanistan.

In short, our collective determination to not let “them”—the terrorists—change our way of life is met with their equal determination to not let “us”—American-led globalization—destroy their way of life. That is why this war may well rival or exceed the length of our Cold War standoff with the Soviets. Terrorism has been around for a long time and has excelled at dispatching monarchs, but the world neither has seen anything on the scale of 11 September, nor have the opportunities to slip in and out of countries been so easy since the 18th century.

Assuming that this conflict will drag on year after year, it is inevitable that the federal homeland security effort will demand a larger share of the federal discretionary budget. At first, this trend will plunge the U.S. Government back into the universe of deficit spending. DoD will benefit substantially from the generalized boost in “security” spending in 9/11’s immediate aftermath, but that plus-up likely will be short-lived, meaning a couple of years.

Now, and continuing to the 2004 presidential election, we likely are to face an economy experiencing nowhere near the record growth rates of the booming 1990s. Say goodbye to the record revenue flows and say hello to the additional costs—both real and opportunity—associated with all this expanded internal security and the consequent restrictions on international traffic entering the United States. Meanwhile the nation will be growing older, as the leading edge of the boomer generation hits the 60-year mark, leading to a further squeeze on the discretionary budget in favor of mandatory social security programs.

After the campaign in Afghanistan is over, whenever that happens, DoD’s budget inevitably will be squeezed. In a three-way race among taking care of elders (who vote), taking care of our personal and domestic security, and resuming the task of maintaining regional stability somewhere “over there,” guess which funding stream gets squeezed the tightest?

The Vision Thing

Many in the national security community who declare that we just experienced another Pearl Harbor likewise assume that the American public inevitably will remain wedded to the notion that this country must stay forward engaged militarily—no matter what the relative cost. That is a huge assumption worth examining.

First, we tend to idealize the “greatest generation’s” selfless willingness to endure the privations and sacrifices of World War II—especially on the home front.

• It was fairly easy to demonize our enemies in that declared war, for those national regimes were truly demonic. We have a much finer line to tread in this virtual “war” against nonstate actors, for no other reason than to avoid the appearance of a generalized “clash of civilizations” with Islam itself, something bin Laden obviously seeks to promote.
• Americans knew it was an us-or-them fight; either our country would prevail or we would have found ourselves largely isolated in a fascist-dominated world. Radical Islam offers no realistic world view. It basically just wants the West—and especially U.S. forces—out of the Middle East.
• World War II lasted a mere four years as far as the United States was concerned. This “war” is likely to drag on far longer. As both the United Kingdom and Israel have shown in recent decades, it is possible to live with ongoing terrorist challenges, but the societal tensions are dramatic and costly. None of this increased domestic security is going to be cheaply achieved and maintained.

Second, since the end of the Cold War, the American public and their representatives in Congress have been clear that they are uncomfortable with the role of global policeman. Some claimed that it was a more dangerous world after the Cold War, and that we had to police it since no one else was going to. They did not have in mind fighting a war like the Soviets did in Afghanistan. It was more like containing the rogues, making a few interventions in internal conflicts once truces had been arranged, and the occasional show of force off Taiwan.

Now, if forward presence and interventions become identified with retaliation by terrorists that results in periodic civilian casualties numbering in the thousands, we should expect strong domestic opposition to emerge and force a debate about the role of the U.S. military in regulating the international security environment. Yes, our collective sense of revenge/justice will propel us sufficiently along to eliminate bin Laden and roll up his al Qaeda network, but there is no guarantee that Americans will remain united beyond that discrete goal.

Third, we just endured a direct attack against our homeland in which roughly as many people died as in the bloodiest day of our nation’s history—the Civil War’s Battle of Antietam. The Bush administration did not panic, but slowly and patiently formed an international coalition and planned carefully prior to beginning military strikes. But think about what that says about what a complex world in which we live.

Bin Laden just killed 5,000 of ours and other countries’ citizens, but our retaliation and our capturing of bin Laden and tracking down his cells in 60 countries mean we have to go out there and do it. We can not do all that from the sea and Whiteman Air Force Base. Bin Laden may have struck us, but a lot of the advanced countries, and Russia and China too, could be struck next. All the countries benefiting from globalization are in this together.  This is a complex international security environment where unilateralism simply does not work.

Fourth, there will be no unlimited pie for “national security,” especially as the mounting deficit is recognized, so any rise in resource requirements for Homeland Security will inevitably eat into the Pentagon’s budget. Less money means either fewer operations, less purchases, or smaller force structure, or diversion of force structure (military personnel) to homeland defense. In any case, U.S military capabilities would be spread more thinly, assuming Americans still think we should be policing the world.

We will need to take some different perspectives on what we thought were going to be threats to our interests. Some interests may not seem so vital anymore, some relationships not worth pursuing to the same degree. But this is not because of the thinness of the forces—they will still be the strongest, most capable forces in the world. It is because of the new perspective of what is most important to the American people.

Finally, there are the dilemmas posed to the Navy itself. The Navy may be tempted in the coming months and years to prove how useful it is in homeland security, just as it was in jumping on the national missile defense bandwagon. Homeland defense in U.S. coastal waters is the job of the U.S. Coast Guard, and it may well benefit from some of the resources diverted from DoD. The U.S. Navy probably does not want to lower its technological sights, but then these roles are not its choice, but the nation’s.

The United States has kept a global navy of great capability, and this has permitted most other countries in the world to concentrate on their “coast guard” navies. If the United States starts operating its navy like a coast guard, we abdicate our role as the world’s navy, and maybe then bin Laden will have succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Saddam and the Iranians would be happy too.

But we do not need to do that. Under any conditions, the United States has much more navy than needed for homeland defense. The U.S. Navy has a critical role in the Persian Gulf and in adjacent waters. It also has a highly symbolic role in maintaining East Asian stability. And we have this broader coalition that we have rediscovered, of which navy-to-navy cooperation plays an important part. There is no reason for the United States to retreat from the world now.

Whither Transformation?

Before 11 September, the strategic debate in defense was between policing the world in the here-and-now and transformation to face an unknown peer competitor, or simply to take advantage of changing technology. But now, it appears that U.S. forces as they exist—with the addition of C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) improvements and more precision-guided munitions—are more than adequate for the war against terrorism. More important may be their new roles in homeland versus international defense:

• The U.S. Army, especially the National Guard and Army Reserve, is taking a big role in homeland defense, and may get to administer the resources for a national missile defense.
• The Air Force, which had organized well for expeditionary responses (AEFs), takes on more a dual role in continental air defense as well as expeditionary operations.
• The Marine Corps proposes a super brigade for domestic and overseas antiterrorism operations.
• With the Coast Guard watching the coasts, the Navy still patrols the Persian Gulf and Asia.

This is not the kind of radical technological transformation most had in mind before 11 September.

The Newer World Order

It is fair to say that when the Bush administration came into power it really did not have a foreign policy, just a firm notion that Clinton’s approach to globalization was far too focused on the broad architecture of free trade.  The anti-Clinton foreign policy basically was a my-way-or-the-highway unilateralism.

In the new administration’s world view, Russia and China were back to being more front-and-center concerns, and India could be a new friend if it signed off on our missile defense. Japan and our European allies were expected to fall in line, even though we were not going to give an inch on things like Kyoto or the World Court. Iran and Iraq were told there was a new sheriff in town, unafraid to crack the whip of tighter sanctions.

That was then, this is now:

• The other NATO members are ready to defend us!
• Japan is gearing up to make real military contributions.
• Moscow is advising us on how to take down Afghanistan.
• China is openly approving a U.S. military intervention in Asia.
• India is asking us for help with Kashmiri terrorists.

Do not think for a minute that all this support will not come with price tags, but clearly we are experiencing an historic moment not seen since Iraq invaded Kuwait. So the question for the Bush administration is this: What world architecture are you going to build to consolidate this groundswell of cooperation?

In effect, we will now see how Bush the Younger’s edition of a New World Order might surpass the aborted version of Bush the Elder. There is good reason to believe that this time that wildly ambitious slogan will stick—both in name and substance. All of the world’s great powers understand that a strong antiglobalization backlash is brewing, threatening the long-term growth and prosperity of all. Before 9/11, Seattle Man was this movement’s scariest face, but he looks laughably impotent compared to the still-rippling global economic shock wave bin Laden unleashed with his World Trade Center/Pentagon attacks.

By making it clear that the major powers are not going to stand by idly while terrorists try to sow systemic disruptions, the East and West may come together to discover a sense of global community that proves to be globalization’s version of “soft power.”

The Navy is a versatile tool for assisting in the sort of security networking among great powers that globalization needs now. So while its key task right now is suppressing the Taliban so others can track down bin Laden, the Navy’s longer-term vision must be twofold:

• Contributing where it can to homeland defense, depending on national decisions on missile defense and the patrolling of coastal waters
• Containing and suppressing those who would disrupt peace and economic progress—the essence of globalization—forward, especially in the Middle East arc of crisis.

It appears that U.S. naval technological capabilities, as they may be incrementally improved, will be adequate for these tasks. The greater challenges may be to take good care of naval personnel, who may be tasked for long stays in distant waters, maintaining adequate readiness, and keeping numbers of ships instead of striving for the ultimate in technologies.

Dr. Barnett is a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, serving as a senior strategic researcher in the Decision Strategies Department of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies.  Dr. Gaffney is a research manager at The CNA Corporation, serving as Team Leader in the Center for Strategic Studies.

Blast from my past: "Globalization is Tested" (2001)

"Globalization is Tested"

by

Thomas P.M. Barnett

COPYRIGHT: The U.S. Naval Institute, 2001 (October issue, p. 57); reprinted with permission

Globalization has taken some serious hits in recent years.  Now, with the terrorist strikes in New York and Washington, it is fair to say that globalization faces its greatest test yet.

The extreme antiglobalization wing represented by terrorist Osama bin Laden is not interested in debating the pace of globalization; it wants it stopped dead in its tracks.  For bin Laden, U.S.-led globalization represents the worst possible corruption of his ideal Muslim society.  It is expressed politically in our support for Israel, culturally in our military presence in Saudi Arabia, and financially in our ability to isolate Iraq and Iran through sanctions.

Bin Laden's symbology of attack could not have been expressed more clearly:

• Operating from one of the most isolated--and least globalized--countries in the world (Afghanistan)
• Using icons of our international connectivity as weapons (United, American Airlines)
• Wreaking unprecedented destruction on our financial and military nerve centers (World Trade Center, Pentagon), while just failing to land a similar blow against our political command center (White House).

How will the United States respond to the challenge?  This question is not adequately answered by any immediate military response.  Rather, it is answered by our willingness to forge a new international rule set, much as we did following World War II. Our goal then was preventing a reoccurrence of the economic nationalism that killed the first wave of globalization (1870-1929).

Today, it is not so much economic nationalism that threatens globalization as cultural nationalism--the assumption that globalization equal forced Americanization.  How does the United States combat that fear? Three steps move us in the right direction.

First, we need to expand dramatically the dialogue between Wall Street and the Pentagon regarding how globalization changes our definitions of national security. Over the past several years, the Naval War College has collaborated with the broker-dealer firm Cantor Fitzgerald in conducting a series of Economic Security Exercises examining scenarios such as a terrorist strike against Wall Street, the Year 2000 Problem, and Asia's future energy needs.

These pioneering wargames are the brainchild of retired Navy Admiral William J. Flanagan, Senior Managing Director of Cantor Fitzgerald, which until 11 September had its international headquarters in the uppermost floors of the World Trade Center. It is not hyperbole to call the September terrorist strike a new form of warfare.  Cantor Fitzgerald's catastrophic human loss (roughly two-thirds of the 1,000 employees headquartered in the World Trade Center) only underscored the paradigm shift.  These individuals were killed not only to terrorize the American people, but also to disable U.S. financial markets and, by doing so, diminish global investor confidence in their long-term stability.

Second, we need a better understanding of which countries are the real enemies of globalization--and thus the United States. Samuel Huntington, in Clash of Civilizations, mistakenly lumped Asia with Islam as "challenger civilizations." Nothing could be further from the truth.  Developing Asia desperately needs two things in the coming years: energy from the Middle East and capital from the West. If either of these two global markets breaks down, Asia cannot move forward and instability will ensue.

Until September, the Bush administration clearly focused national security strategy on Asia in general and China in particular. This was a huge mistake in the making, but the danger has not yet passed. As the United States pursues this war against international terrorism, we must be aware that the West and Asia can either come together or be driven apart by events in the Middle East. Remember this: as far as globalization is concerned, China is not the problem; it is the prize.

Finally, both Washington and the American public need to come to grips with the inevitable reality that this war on terrorism only will cement our nation's role as global policeman.  There will be a rather scary blurring of the lines between external war fighting and internal policing roles--not only abroad but within the United States.

Since the Cold War, the U.S. military has bifurcated progressively into a high-tech strike force designed for state-on-state war and a lower-tech mobile police-state forces designed for military operations other than war. This war on terrorism only will exacerbate that emerging split and render it permanent, with much of the change coming under the guise of "homeland defense."

Dr. Barnett is a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, serving as a senior strategic researcher in the Decision Strategies Department of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies.

Blast from my past: "India's 12 Steps to a World-Class Navy" (2001)

India's 12 Steps to a World-Class Navy

by Thomas P.M. Barnett

The International Fleet Reviews in February showed off its impressive fleet; now the Indian Navy must determine how it wants to use it.

COPYRIGHT: The U.S. Naval Institute, 2001 (July issue, pp. 41-45); reprinted with permission

In February of this year ...  
I had the pleasure of attending the Indian Navy’s first-ever International Fleet Review in Mumbai, where I made a presentation to a symposium audience of 16 chiefs of naval staff and dozens of flag officers from an additional 13 navies. This fleet review, which went by the motto “Bridges of Friendship,” essentially was the Indian Navy’s “coming out” party after many years of building up and modernizing its force structure, mostly through foreign purchases.

You may ask, “Coming out for what?” Frankly, that was the real theme of the high-powered symposium, as well as of numerous discussions I had with Indian flag officers, both active and retired. In many ways, this grand celebration was the swan song for a generation of Indian admirals who propelled this once humble coastal force to its current heights as the world’s fourth-largest navy. Not only do they want the international community to take note and show some respect, but they also are looking for some clear sense of where their Navy fits in this messy post-Cold War security environment.

Future Pathways of the Indian Navy

It is fair to say that every Indian admiral I spoke with represented his own school of thought, but I sensed two broad strategic factions, which I dub the Soviet School and the British School. This division recalls not only the perceived operational disparity between the Eastern and Western fleets (the former long considered the “Russian half” of the Indian Navy; the latter the “British half”) but also the difference between a land-oriented great power’s strategic employment of naval force and that of a sea-oriented one. Not surprisingly, most of the British School admirals I met had studied at the U.S. Naval War College. Conversely, I could discuss my love for Russian poetry—in the original—with those of the Soviet School.

I further subdivide each school into two wings: those admirals who believe the Indian Ocean “belongs” to the Indian Navy (and not to any “meddlesome outsiders,” including the U.S. Navy) and those who believe the Indian Navy “belongs” to something larger—typically, the collective good of global maritime security.

Putting those two axes together, I see four future pathways for the Indian Navy:

• Minimum-Deterrent Navy (Soviet School/regional focus). This is the weakest long-term outcome because it relegates the Navy to an adjunct to the Army and Air Force in India’s continuing nuclear arms race with Pakistan. This tendency most recently is demonstrated in New Delhi’s declaration to remain “equal” to any Pakistani move to put nuclear missiles on its submarines.[1]  Recalling the Soviet Navy’s bastion strategy, this is a go-nowhere, do-little navy.
• Sea-Denial Navy (Soviet School/global ambition). This is an anti-China navy that seeks to export an antiaccess strategy to the South China Sea. Like the old Soviet fleet, it focuses on antiship capabilities with an emphasis on attack submarines. In its most aggressive form, it might be construed by some as an anti-U.S. navy in terms of its modest capacity for power projection toward the Persian Gulf. During the fleet review’s grand finale, Indian naval commandos demonstrated their quick-strike skills by planting explosive charges on three mock oil rigs in Mumbai’s Back Bay. They demolished the platforms to the delight of the huge crowds lining the shore, providing the VIP audience of foreign admirals a none too subtle reminder of where India resides, namely, right along the sea route that carries the majority of the world’s energy traffic from the Middle East to developing Asia.
• Sea Lines of Communication–Stability Navy (British School/regional focus). This is the polar opposite of the sea-denial navy, for it takes as its prime task the preservation of the Indian Ocean as a safe transit for global commerce. This Indian Navy seeks to supplant the U.S. Navy as the region’s sea-based Leviathan, not so much because it wants the United States out, but because India believes this is an appropriate regional security role for it to fill as its economy emerges. Another way to describe this navy is the “Mini-Me Navy,” or the Indian Navy’s regionalized version of the U.S. Navy—same rough spread of capabilities, just one-eighth the size.
• International Coalition Navy (British school/global ambition). This is the most ambitious navy, for it assumes two key developments: (1) a lessening of the land-based rivalries with Pakistan and China; and (2) a far bigger share of the Indian defense budget going to the navy, which now receives around 15%. In a practical sense, this is a “niche navy,” or India’s version of the current Royal Navy: a pro-international norms force that can deploy with some genuine reach when combined with the U.S. Navy in a multinational naval coalition. On the face of it, some nations might instinctively fear an Indian Navy of such capability, but such a long-term development would signal a secure and confident New Delhi looking to do its part for global security maintenance. As a rule, dangerous powers field large armies and air forces, not large navies.

Which navy India will end up with is anyone’s guess. Based on everything I heard in Mumbai, strong rationales exist within the Indian Navy for each outcome. But clearly, for India to achieve a world-class navy, its leaders have to move beyond viewing the fleet as a supplemental tool in New Delhi’s long-standing rivalries with its neighbors, toward an expansive security vision that takes into account the nation’s global economic status as an emerging information-technology superpower.

A 12-Step Program for the Indian Navy

India’s naval development has progressed to where its leaders need to elevate their vision beyond what the force can provide the country in terms of security to the larger issue of what it can provide the world in terms of stability. I see this as a 12-step program, borrowing liberally from the self-help literature so popular in the United States today. In effect, the senior officers of the Indian Navy need to:

1. Admit they are powerless over the Army and Air Force in determining national security priorities. Over the years India’s best and brightest did not join the Navy; there were a lot more opportunities to launch glorious military careers in the north against either the Pakistanis or the Chinese. But even if the ground pounders rule the military roost, their definition of national security is mostly internalized (what happens here), whereas the naval definition should be almost exclusively externalized (what happens over there). By my scoring, India is not a legitimate great power until it generates a surplus of external security—beyond what it needs to protect the country from outside attack. Once achieved, either New Delhi markets that surplus externally as a collective good or it ends up scaring the hell out of the neighbors. So let the Army and Air Force set India’s national security priorities, but the Navy needs to establish India’s international security priorities because only the Navy can make that sale.

2. Believe that a greater power—globalization—can elevate their force to strategic vision.  As one Indian commander complained, “We are strategic suckers!” What passes for grand strategy in the Indian military is nothing more than “J & K tactics”—India’s long-simmering, high-altitude version of trench/guerrilla warfare with Pakistan over the disputed Jammu and Kashmir region. Nuclearizing the fleet on Karachi’s say-so might seem the prudent tit for tat, but it hardly constitutes a strategic naval vision when the leaders in your industry have long since turned in their tactical nukes and loaded up on precision-guided missiles. Globalization is splintering the concept of national security, generating new markets for both supranational and subnational security, two venues in which naval forces offer unique response attributes. Through its information technology sector, India is becoming a major player in the process of globalization, sporting more millionaires than any country in the world.[2] At some point, it will be asked to give something back, and a visionary internationalist navy will answer the mail nicely—so long as it is good for something other than humping lots of nukes around territorial waters.

3. Make a decision to turn their Navy’s operational focus toward influencing events ashore.  I was both gratified and amazed to hear so many Indian admirals refer to the 1992 white paper, “. . . From the Sea” as a great turning point in naval strategy—gratified because I had a small role in shaping that document, amazed because I always had assumed the Indians looked more to Gorshkov than Mahan. Granted, there was some waxing nostalgic about the “spectacular Soviet Navy,” and more than a few Indian admirals revealed bitterness about Washington’s efforts to “demonize” the Indian Navy because of its old Soviet (and now Russian) ties. But by and large the flags revealed a real admiration for the U.S. Navy’s effort to shift from a blue-water to a littoral focus. Actually, it was almost an envy, simply because the U.S. Navy seems to know what it wants to do once it gains access to “events ashore,” and the Indians have not really made that cognitive leap. They know they want the capability; they just are not sure yet how they would use it. Again, this is because the Indian military acts as though security is something they import, like so many Russian subs, not something they export to the world.

4. Make a searching and fearless inventory of their lack of involvement in recent international coalitions.  In his impressive symposium presentation, retired Indian Navy Rear Admiral K. Raja Menon noted how the Indian Navy has avoided numerous opportunities over the past generation to join multinational maritime coalitions in response to significant regional instabilities (e.g., tanker wars, Iran-Iraq war, Persian Gulf War), even though the Indian Army has long played a significant peacekeeping role in U.N. operations. In short, he argued, the Indian Navy for far too long has pursued an excessively narrow interpretation of the role of navies in regional and international security. As he wryly stated, regional power is a lot like sex appeal: no matter how often India admires itself in the mirror, it isn’t a regional power until outside powers recognize it as such. Or as I would put it, India seems less the regional power precisely because it does not employ its navy in the manner of a sea-based great power. A small power may have regional interests, but only a great power has regional responsibilities.

5. Admit their mistakes in force structure planning.  Despite the scrappy genius of their plug-and-play approach to purchases of foreign platforms and systems, the Indians have not made much of a transition to a post-Cold War naval environment. As some younger officers complained, the Indian Navy still remains far more suited to the sort of open-sea ship battles associated with World War II than to the littoral-focused strategies of network-centric warfare. In a nutshell, the Indian Navy remains an antiship missile in a cruise missile world. It talks a good game on influencing events ashore, but it continues to buy for sea denial. But maybe that is an inevitable outcome from purchasing the bulk of your naval platforms from the world’s great land power.

6. Understand they are a relatively young navy, with the shortcomings that come from a lack of international experience.  I was struck by how many retired Indian flags kept referring to their navy as young, or even adolescent. Despite a naval tradition going back to antiquity, Indian admirals will tell you that their beloved institution still has a lot of growing up to do. In their minds, it takes a century to mature a navy, so February’s grand celebration marked just the rough halfway point to what they dream the Indian Navy is capable of becoming. I could not help but imagine the Indian Navy as a young man who, having been abandoned in his infancy by his father (Royal Navy), was forced to spend his youth with his eccentric aunt (Soviet Navy) but now wants to break out and see the world for himself—or perhaps with his rich, world-wise uncle (U.S. Navy). And if that makes it sound like the Indian Navy has a complex, conflicted, almost love-hate relationship with all three navies, then it is an apt metaphor.

7. Expand their nation’s security paradigm beyond the “sacred soil syndrome.”  This is another golden nugget from Admiral Menon, who describes this “cult of the land forces” as stemming from past wars with China (1962) and Pakistan (1965, 1971). Strangely enough, it is possible to argue that no other state in the world should care either more or less than India about the sanctity of its borders. On one hand, no nation has lost more land since World War II (e.g., Pakistan, Bangladesh). On the other hand, no economy today better demonstrates the “death of distance” associated with information technology—India produces roughly half of the world’s software, literally phoning it in to the rest of the global economy. In New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s lexicon, India is at once a leading “lexus” economy (i.e., high-technology producer) and a classic “olive tree” society (i.e., still fighting over seemingly meaningless bits of land).[3] Granted, the sacred soil syndrome is not going to disappear anytime soon, but some strategic balance is needed. And in the military world, such vision can come only from the naval service.

8. Improve their relationships with all small littoral neighbors.  In many ways the Indian Navy would like to supplant the U.S. Navy as the Indian Ocean’s naval, networking Leviathan—the trusted big brother everyone can turn to in moments of trouble. In some ways, this will never happen. By definition, any region’s smaller powers want and need a distant friend who can stand up to the neighborhood bully, and for many small littoral states, India comes closest to fitting that pejorative title. From India’s perspective, they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t: if they try to act the part of regional hegemon, they will only scare smaller powers into closer reliance on U.S. naval power, and yet in the absence of any productive input, India has a hard time demonstrating to its neighbors that it can play a useful, leading role in enabling regional security. In sum, India possesses too large a navy not to play a bigger stabilizing role in the Indian Ocean—especially as the waterway’s role in world energy transfers increases—but it needs to build relationships of trust with its smaller neighbors slowly over time.

9. Make some amends to regional rivals.  The obvious candidates here are Pakistan and China, neither of which made it to the fleet review, and that’s too bad. Pakistan was not invited, and China refused to come because its ally was excluded. India can build all the “bridges of friendship” it wants across Asia, but so long as those two countries remain quasi enemies or at least heated rivals, it is hard to see India achieving the sort of progressive, stability-enhancing regional role it desires for its growing navy. And again, that’s too bad, for no ocean is in need of strategic stability more than the Indian Ocean, which is arguably the most nuclearized of the seven seas.[4]

10. Make an inventory of the global maritime insecurities they need to play a more prominent role in reducing.  The Indians are fond of pointing out that not only do they sit astride the two most important commercial straits in the world (Hormuz and Malacca), but they also are situated smack dab between two of the most important narcotic centers—the Golden Crescent to the West and the Golden Triangle to the East. Toss in the fact that modern high-seas piracy is especially concentrated in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea, plus all the overlapping sovereignty claims in both, and you have a sizeable security agenda for any would-be regional naval power. And when you get all those houses in order, get ready to tackle environmental damage, rising ocean levels, and altered weather patterns. In sum, India’s growing naval power could be put to good use across a very broad range of regional collective security needs.

11. Seek an expanded navy-to-navy relationship with the world’s sole military superpower.  U.S. naval presence in the Indian Ocean littoral isn’t going away any time soon. There are simply too many states there that want the collective good the U.S. Navy is selling, and it is a trusted brand with a long, solid reputation. If you look at U.S. naval crisis response over the past quarter-century, it is apparent that this area is the Department of Navy’s operational center of gravity. As former Indian foreign secretary J. N. Dixit commented about increased U.S. naval presence in southwest Asia following the Persian Gulf War: “These are the facts of life.” India becomes a genuine naval regional power only in conjunction with the U.S. Navy—not in opposition to it, or even as a marketed alternative. The U.S. Navy is the Microsoft of world navies; it simply sets too many operational standards and protocols to be ignored.

12. Having achieved this awakening from the strategic isolation of the Cold War, carry their new message of internationalism to the world.  This year’s International Fleet Review was a great start. The Indian naval leadership brought me to this star-studded gathering to—as one retired vice admiral put it—“say something about the future to the junior officers in the back of the hall.” But they also brought me to Mumbai, just as they brought all those foreign flag officers, to impress upon me a sense of all they have accomplished in building this navy over the past five decades, and what they hope to do with it in the future. And I did go away impressed, not only with the Indian Navy, but also with the incredible diversity, vibrancy, and ambition that is today’s India.

Why India Matters

As noted diplomat Sashi Tharoor argues, India is probably “the most important country for the future of the world.”[5]  If globalization succeeds in the United States or the European Union, no one will be too surprised. After all, globalization demands less change of these countries than it does of the world around them. And if globalization fails in China or Russia, many likewise will be unsurprised, for it requires much change from both societies—perhaps too much too quickly.

But whether globalization succeeds in India should interest just about everyone around the world. For if globalization can succeed in a democratic society where half the population is illiterate and terribly impoverished, then it can succeed just about anywhere. Conversely, if it can’t succeed in a free-market economy that features the world’s largest pool of information technology workers, then there is little hope for much of the world’s population.

Not too long ago Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld characterized India as a country that is “threatening other people, including the U.S., Western Europe and countries in West Asia.”[6]  In my dealings with Wall Street as part of a Naval War College project on globalization, I have spoken with a number of financial executives about India and its role in the global economy, and naturally I have found quite a different appreciation there.[7] In fact, besides China, there is no country in the world about which there is such a huge gap between how the U.S. security establishment and the U.S. financial establishment view—respectively—the security “threat” and the economic “opportunity.”

India suffers some profound military insecurities—the sort that often derail a society’s best attempts to open itself to the outside world. The Indian Navy is the country’s best near- and long-term instrument for positively asserting itself as a force for both regional and global stability. The Bush administration needs to think seriously about what sort of security relationship it wants with India in the coming years.  Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage’s May trip to New Dehli was a huge step in the right direction, signalling an easing of the restrictions on military contacts imposed by the Clinton Administration following India nuclear weapons tests in 1998.  Let’s hope it jump starts a far broader menu of strategic cooperation.

[1] As India’s Defense Ministry spokesman P.K. Bandopadhyay declared, “We are also fully prepared for the deployment of nuclear missiles by them.” See The Associated Press, “Pakistan Planning Fleet With Nuclear Weapons: India Vows to Match Submarine Deployment,” International Herald Tribune, 23 February 2001, p. 1.

[2]  Good estimates vary from 15 to 20 million millionaires. India is estimated to possess a middle class of about 200 million.

[3]  See Friedman’s The Lexus And The Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1999).

[4]  Among the nuclear powers whose navies ply this ocean are the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel.

[5]  Sashi Tharoor, India: From Midnight to the Millennium (New York: Harper, 1998 paperback), p. 3. Tharoor actually quotes British historian E. P. Thompson with this phrase.

[6] This quote was run on the front page of The Times of India during the fleet review. See Siddharth Varadarajan, “Stop supply of N-fuel to India, U.S. tells Russia,” The Sunday Times, 18 February 2001, p. 1.

[7] To learn more about the Naval War College’s NewRuleSets.Project and to access its reports, visit us online at <www.nwc.navy.mil/newrulesets>.

Dr. Barnett is a former professor at the U.S. Naval War College, and served as a senior strategic researcher in the Decision Strategies Department of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies. He thanks Professor Bradd Hayes, Professor Hank Kamradt, Rear Admiral Michael McDevitt, USN (ret.), and Dr. Lawrence Modisett for their input to, and feedback on, this article.

Blast from my past: "Top Ten Post-Cold War Myths" (2001)

Top Ten Post-Cold War Myths

by

Thomas P.M. Barnett and Henry H. Gaffney Jr.

As a mobile, sea-based containment force, 
the U.S. Navy will continue to play an 
important role in the nation's foreign policy, 
but its missions will mirror the clustered responses 
in Iraq and Yugoslavia, not the 
obsolete two-major-theater-war standard.

COPYRIGHT: The U.S. Naval Institute, 2001 (February issue, pp. 32-38); reprinted with permission

As we begin . . . 
a new presidential administration, it is time to look over the recent past to see what we have learned about this new era of globalization.  Americans entered the Clinton administration with a lot of hope about an outside world where so many positives had emerged with the end of the Cold War.  The United States was the sole military superpower; what could go wrong?

Depending on whom you listen to, either a lot or not too much.  Those experts who focus on the global economy see plenty to celebrate, but most who track international security see lots of threatening chaos in the world.  How can these views be so different?  Are there no connections between global economics and security? How can the former flourish if the latter is deteriorating? 

We’ll say it up front: we don’t think international security has worsened over the past eight years.  Instead, we think too many political-military analysts—in an attempt to justify the retention of Cold War forces—have let their vision be clouded by a plethora of post-Cold War myths, the biggest of which is the two-major-theater-war (2-MTW) standard.  It was the best strategy placeholder then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin could come up with to put a floor on force structure, but 2-MTW doesn’t capture the reality of the globalization era, the migration of conflict to the failing states outside that globalization, and the continued technological advances U.S. forces are introducing, which no other country pursues.  In short, it is not connected to the world at all.

In our decades-long hair-trigger standoff with the Soviets, U.S. strategists became addicted to “vertical” scenarios, meaning surprise situations that unfold with lightning speed in a specific strategic environment that is, by and large, static.  By static, we mean all potential participants are expected to come as they are.  No one is really changed by the scenario, and no evolution is possible in their response.  In this poker game, we expected everyone to play the single hand in question straight up: no bluffing, no hedging, and no changes of heart.  In essence, we had to assume the two main players were rational actors.  The only thing that seemed to change in this static picture was the race to add better technology.  We always feared the Soviets had gotten there first, or were about to—a fear we subsequently transferred to the rogues.

This approach made sense in the Cold War, when we had to make certain gross assumptions about how both Soviet Bloc forces and our NATO allies would behave at the outbreak of World War III, but it just does not apply in the globalization era.  If the last eight years have taught us anything, it is that political-military scenarios in the post-Cold War era will unfold “horizontally.”   Situations will evolve over time with few clear-cut turning points, typically lapsing into a cyclical pattern that nonetheless features dramatic differences with each go-around.  Think of our dealings with Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic and you’ll get the picture. 

In horizontal scenarios, everything—and everyone—is free to evolve over time, meaning positions change, allies come and go, and definitions of the “real situation” abound.  In this strategic environment, sizing and preparing one’s forces according to vertical scenarios isn’t just inappropriate; it is dangerous.  It fosters a confidence in packaged solutions employing packaged forces armed with packaged assumptions—the 2-MTW standard in a nutshell—so that anything else you do with the forces reduces your readiness for those 2 MTWs.

Both the 2-MTW standard and the high-tech wannabes, with their nostalgia for "imminent" Soviet breakthroughs, suffer from slavish adherence to a collection of myths concerning the post-Cold War era.  If we are ever going to move beyond their vertical scenarios to a better understanding of where the military fits in the globalization era, these myths must be punctured and discarded.  Our top ten list of myths is:

10. There are far more conflicts and crises in the world after the Cold War! The number inflation on this one is unreal: suddenly every terrorist shoot-out and ten-person liberation movement is a “low intensity conflict.” When we count the significant conflicts and crises of the 1990s and compare them to those of the 1980s, however, we don’t find the stunning increase some analysts do.  In the 1980s, we see one system-threatening conflict (the Iran-Iraq War), and in the 1990s we see two (Desert Storm, the Congo War—the latter a stretch).  In the 1980s, we count 6 significant state-based conflicts and 24 internal conflicts, compared to 7 and 28, respectively, in the 1990s.^[1]  In sum, we’re looking at an overall increase of 6 cases, or fewer than one a year.  Worth worrying about?  Yes, since internal warfare these days involves failing states and generates lots of refugees.  But a new world disorder?  Hardly.

What political-military analysts should recognize in globalization is a remaking of the international economic order that rewards the most fit and devastates the least ready—in the same society.  In advanced countries, the resulting conflict will be mostly political, but in some developing societies, these horizontal tensions will turn bloody in scattered instances. If you’re looking for a defining conflict, check out Indonesia’s disintegration following the Asian economic crisis.

9. The Soviet Bloc's collapse unleashed chaos!

The myth is that, with the stabilizing hand of the Soviets removed, conflicts have bloomed across the globe. This issue needs to be divided into its constituent parts: Soviet support to the Third World, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet republics.  In every instance the balance of the news is positive.

Looking at the old Third World, we view the collapse of Soviet assistance as an absolute good.  Central America is certainly quieter for its absence, as is southern Africa as a whole, though Angola still burns.  In the Middle East, Yemen is reunified, Qaddafi has stopped playing the Arab bad boy (for now), and the PLO lost Moscow's support. Granted, Soviet arms beneficiary Iraq reached a use-it-or-lose-it moment in 1990, and went for broke, but the same cannot be said for Syria.  Afghanistan still stinks as a place to live, and Vietnam still goes its own way, but in sum, it's a pretty good deal for global order.

Some people insist on calling Eastern Europe a security vacuum, but the balance is very positive, with the obvious exception of the former Yugoslavia.  But if Gorbachev had come to us 15 years ago and said he could arrange for the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the peaceful reunification of Germany, and the absorption of several former satellite states into NATO, but the cost would be a bloody civil war in Yugoslavia . . . well, you get the idea.  Moreover, Balkan experts will tell you that Yugoslavia's demise had nothing to do with the fall of the Soviets.  It was a disaster waiting to happen once Tito passed away.

Finally, when looking at the former Soviet republics, we are sobered by events in Chechnya, the rest of the Caucasus, and Tajikistan, but still view the overall evolution as far more conflict free than anyone could have expected. Remember when we feared Russian invasions of the Baltic republics?  Or Ukraine’s imminent Anschluss with Moscow?  Or a wave of radical Islamic fundamentalism sweeping the “Stans?"  (Okay, we are still watching that one.)    Best yet, whatever violence has occurred here has been left to the Russians to figure out—unlike the Balkans.

8. We are swamped with failed states! 

“Failed states” is another label that’s bandied about far too loosely. Reading some reports, you’d think they were spreading like wildfire across the planet.  But there always have been failed states; we just never called them that.  Instead, we used to call the Somozas and Siad Barrés “valued friend” and “trusted ally,” even as we helped to prop up their flimsy dictatorships.  The Russians had a fancier phrase, “countries of socialist orientation,” but that was just Sovietese for flimsy communist dictatorships.

 What defines a failed state in the globalization era is its failure to attract foreign investment.  When none appears, or the leaderships steals it, the same feeble government that somehow muddled through the Cold War with superpower (or French) help now simply collapses.  In the early 1990s, when the United States led what became U.N.-sanctioned interventions into Somalia and Haiti, there was optimistic talk of a new model—namely, the United Nations serving as midwife to these tortured societies’ slippery transition to stable economies and government.  But the ill-supported United Nations proved a poor substitute for a superpower propping up a government with arms and military training.

Of the 36 countries in which internal conflicts occurred across the 1990s, the United States decided—after much angst—to intervene in only four: Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo.  So why did the decade seem so chock-full of U.S. interventions?   Those four situations accounted for about half of all naval responses overseas and the bulk of the ship days involved in such operations.^[2]  To put it bluntly, advanced countries can safely ignore failed states (except maybe Indonesia), until “those damned Seattle people,” with their silly “values,” embarrass them.

7. Transnational actors are taking over the world! 

This bugaboo must also be disaggregated to make sense of it.  Starting with terrorists, the hype ignores historical data.  According to the State Department’s annual report on terrorism, the phenomenon peaked in the second half of the 1980s, when it averaged 630 international attacks a year.  Then the Soviet Bloc’s support system disappeared and so did much of the terrorism.  Since 1989 terrorists have averaged 382 attacks per year—a 40% drop.^[3]

Drug cartels and Mafia syndicates do not seek to disrupt global economic or political stability, but merely to generate profits. In effect, they desire macrostability within and among nation-states in order to create and exploit microinstabilities—i.e., illegal markets. These criminals are not interested in destabilizing or capturing political institutions, but in influencing them for their own ends. Granted, Colombia represents an odd turn, as the Marxist guerrillas there are now dependent on drug proceeds.  But in general, the drug kingpins prefer to stay out of politics.

The same could be said for illegal aliens, who are looking for economic opportunity. Too rapid a migration can destabilize, but immigration is far from out of control in developed countries: seven out of eight immigrants now settled there arrived legally.^[4]  As for refugees displaced by conflicts, they are by-products of local chaos, and their "transnational" effects largely are limited to the next country over.

Finally, you have to wonder about the tendency of some national security strategists to lump transnational corporations (TNCs) in with this motley crew.  TNCs not only represent the future of the global economy, they also account for the bulk of our 401ks.  Anyway, it is a myth that TNCs act with indifference to their birth nations: every one has a home base, and almost all members of their boards come from that home.  But the big point to remember is that TNCs invest overwhelmingly in countries where there is firm rule of law.

6. Technology proliferation is out of control! 

This myth is sold in two sizes: rogue states and asymmetrical warriors.  The funny thing is, in both instances, everyone usually ends up talking about the same sorry list of old Soviet-client survivors.

With the rogues, the biggest concern is that they are either buying or selling nuclear and missile technology.  We also worry about them developing chemical and biological weapons, but that is not really high-tech anymore (nor have they made any of it work).  Then again, their missiles aren’t state of the art either, as everything passed around this gang tends to use old Soviet technology.   

Now, many of the “new security” types will try to sell you on the notion that missile proliferation is rampant among unspecified “potential adversaries” (their fear mongering would dissolve if they had to say who), but they’re really stretching here.  Over the past decade more countries have just said no than yes. 

Again, it is the four rogues who are proliferating (Libya, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea), and none is really doing very well at it.  This quartet lives off of three suppliers who are in it for the bucks—Russia, China, and North Korea.  U.S. diplomats are all over the three suppliers to join the civilized world of functioning economies, leaving it to the Pentagon to keep the pressure on the rogues.  That does not sound like an out-of-control problem to us.

The “asymmetrical warriors” or “potential adversaries” are implied to exist in vast numbers, although few, if any, have ever been spotted in the wild.  Nonetheless, we are told that all they need nowadays is a credit card and Internet access and voila—almost any dangerous technology can be picked up on e-Bay!  This is the “silver bullet” concept taken to extremes: these warriors are presumed to deftly deny our access to conflicts by negating our high-tech advantage with their Radio Shack stuff.  Meanwhile, we spend on military research and development alone more than what the rogues spend on their entire militaries.

5. China is the new Soviet Union! 

China is not the Soviet Union.  It remains a communist-governed country and retains major elements of a command economy, it mostly decollectivized its agriculture two decades ago and now sports a massive private sector.  This mixed economy makes it unlikely that China will undertake anything like the single-minded military-industrial effort the Soviets made. Moreover, its defense technology is primitive and there are no signs it is embarking on anything like the Soviets’ high-level, concentrated scientific efforts.

China never presumed to offer an alternative world system and has no satellites, although it wants Taiwan back.  Other than that myopic focus, it is fair to say that its relations with other Asian states are still evolving.  China doesn’t aspire to conquer its neighbors and doesn’t pretend to spread communism, but it still worries about Western nations encroaching from the sea, as they did in the 19^th century.

We kid ourselves when we cast China as this century’s Soviet menace.  China desperately needs our direct investment for its skyrocketing energy requirements and our market for its low-tech exports.  

4. Speed is everything in crisis response!

This concept is ingrained in our psyche because of our Cold War fears and the experience of Desert Shield. We have become addicted to speed of response because we are a reactive nation and have a long way to travel to any conflict.  But here is where the world’s sole military superpower may be underestimating its power. 

First, as the world’s Leviathan, what we bring to the table is not so much speed as the inevitability of our punishing power.  The speed demons will counter that we have to rush in precisely because our foe will deny us the access we need to bring all that power to bear.  This is an argument that strings a lot of little fears together into one big phobia:

• The Air Force fears we will be denied access to bases by cowed allies—an improbable scenario if we’re coming to defend them.
• The Marines fear we will have no choice but to perform forcible-entry amphibious landings because we don’t have any allies at all—cowering or not (tell that to the South Koreans).
• The Navy fears it won’t be able to operate in the close-in littoral in a timely manner and without losses, and will thus lose out to . . . the U.S. Air Force. 

Two underlying realities render this debate moot: First, we are living in an age of horizontal scenarios where nothing really comes out of the blue anymore. If we don’t see the crisis coming, it is because we choose not to pay attention.  Second, other than the unlikely cases involving extensive direct attacks on the United States, we are stuck with only surprise attacks by Iraq and North Korea (even China issued the required Notices to Mariners before testing missiles over Taiwanese waters in 1996). Sure, there could be other surprises, but none so system threatening.

Simply put, outside of Iraq or North Korea, administrations no longer have the writ to commit this country to large-scale violence without some sort of debate. The Cold War featured stand-offs with the Soviets (e.g., Berlin, Cuba) where the President was pretty much on his own, but those days—and that dire strategic environment—are long gone.

3. We cannot handle all these simultaneous crises!

At first glance, the Navy looks mighty busy across the 1990s, meaning three to five simultaneous naval responses across multiple theaters for much of the decade.  Look deeper and you see a different picture: lengthy strings of sequential operations clustered around just Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, and Yugoslavia.  Using traditional counting methods, these four situations account for roughly half of all naval responses in the decade.  Almost all the rest were noncombatant evacuations or responses to natural disasters, except for brief shows of force off Taiwan and Korea.

How we interpret the strategic environment determines how we prepare to meet its challenges, and clearly, these “response clusters” represent serious change.  During the Cold War we contained the Soviet Union along the entire breadth of Eurasia, concentrating our permanently stationed forces at such key points as the Fulda Gap and the Korean demilitarized zone.  Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy balanced the Soviet Navy in the Mediterranean, Gulf, and Western Pacific. But the bipolar age, with its unified containment strategy, yielded to a more scattered and shifting sort of containment in the 1990s.  In effect, we think the Somalia, Yugoslavia, Haiti and Iraq represent a new response category: drawn-out minicontainments designed to stabilize individuals regions.

2. We are doing more with less!

Just talking naval forces, ship numbers are down over the 1990s, while responses to situations—measured in the traditional manner—are up.  Behind all this numerology (e.g., a noncombatant evacuation operation counts as much as a Desert Storm), however, lurks a persistent myth: naval forces are therefore grossly underfunded and suffering serious operational strain.  Analysts pushing this argument are simply barking up the wrong tree.

Most of the stress on naval forces comes from the Persian Gulf and our near continuous operations there since 1979.  The Pacific, meanwhile, has been quiet—in terms of responses to situations—for the last quarter century.  Both the Mediterranean and the Caribbean were reasonably busy in the 1990s, but like the Gulf, the bulk of the activity involved one lengthy situation each (Yugoslavia and Haiti).  The numerologists see response totals as way up, but in reality the Navy spent the 1990s focused on just those four big situations. And it was not alone: Navy-only responses dropped from 74% in the 1970s to 35% in the 1990s, the rest being joint or combined.

Amazingly, despite being tied down in the Gulf and working the rest of the world with fewer ships, the U.S. Navy is breaking neither operational nor personnel tempo.  All of the responses are being conducted by regularly deploying ships (Desert Storm is the great exception). Ship schedules are definitely disrupted and some port calls missed.  Speed of advance for some transits has been accelerated, but turnaround ratios for carriers have lengthened.  In sum, we have not needed to deploy ships ahead of schedule, nor are we short a carrier when we really need one. 

In sum, the U.S. military is handling the current response load with dexterity, with the exception of high-demand/low-density assets (e.g., Navy EA-6Bs, Army civil affairs specialists).  But that particular problem only highlights the illogic of centering all our strategic planning on the abstraction known as the 2-MTW standard.

1. All we can plan for is complete uncertainty!

Trying to capture global change by looking at U.S. military history is like looking through the wrong end of a telescope: our interventions are but a thin slice of a much larger reality, most of which is wrapped up in globalization.  Moreover, the military deals mostly with the seamy underbelly of an otherwise pretty good world, which gives it a peculiar perspective.  The biggest global events of the past eight years were the explosive rise of the Internet and international financial flows, the Asian economic crisis, and last year’s Y2K drill, none of which involved the defense community in any significant way.  Instead, the military got stuck largely with watching the store on Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, and Yugoslavia—the losers of the world.

Some like to describe the 1990s as a time of chaos, identifying uncertainty as our new foe. Many take the Clinton administration to task for merely reacting to events and having no coherent foreign policy, as if that were different from previous administrations.  But anyone who lived through the tense and constant confrontations with the Soviet Union should be grateful for this sort of “uncertainty.” 

When we look over these years, we detect a clear routinization of what used to be legitimately described as crisis response, not some growth of uncertainty.  For the Navy, its presence in the Gulf has become routine. Its drug patrols has become routine.  Its presence in the Western Pacific is stabilizing as far as everyone but the Chinese are concerned, but this has practically nothing to do with “responses” since the end of the Vietnam War—thus it is routine.  Even last decade’s clustered responses in the eastern Mediterranean assumed a familiar routine, dragging on for years until Milosevic finally fell.  As for Africa, we have seen this nation and its leadership shy away, passing up lots of opportunities to intervene.

But was there any grand strategy that linked together all these choices? Not really.  And maybe that’s what irks us political-military strategists most: as this circus parade known as globalization winds it ways around the planet, the military is mostly left to clean up what the elephants of the advanced world would just as soon leave behind and forget.   As such, we think it is relatively easy to predict what the U.S. military will be called upon to do over the next ten years: several of these minicontainments plus the usual scattering of minor responses.   

Moving Naval Strategic Planning Beyond Mythology 

The world is not a more dangerous place after the Cold War.  Chaos, it turns out, is not as fungible as we once thought, and uncertainty, like all politics, is local.  But adjusting to this brave new world does not necessarily equate to a reduced role for the military in U.S. foreign policy, especially naval forces.  Rather, it means we now have a broader and more flexible basis on which to plan.  The new national military strategy clearly lies somewhere between our recent extremes—neither matching the Soviet Union nor policing the Soviet-less world.

Finding that middle ground means moving away from the abstractions embodied in the 2-MTW standard.  Simply put, we have gathered enough data points across the 1990s to plot out this decade’s navy, if not the navy after next:  

• It is a naval force that lives in, and deals with, the present world, one that is always likely to afford the United States several opportunities for lengthy, minicontainment operations.  We will not address all of them, but pick and choose as we see fit, with the key determining factor being that situation’s potential disruption of the global economy.
• This force is comfortable with uncertainty, because these response clusters will come and go, meaning multiple operational centers of gravity that shift with time.
• This force plays an important, if largely background role in enabling globalization’s continued advance, especially in developing Asia, by embodying the closest thing the world has to a true Leviathan—the undeterrable, always familiar military giant.
• This navy lacks any real peers and hence can confidently plan for the future, which means staying just enough ahead on technology to discourage the rest of the world from trying to keep up.
• Above all, this naval service should take good care of its ships, aircraft and people, without using them up and exhausting itself.  Outside the Persian Gulf, the world does not need it that much, and when it does, we will have warning time.      

The Navy has moved far enough beyond the Cold War to understand its “new” role in international stability.  If it seems familiar, it is because the base of our operations has remained essentially unchanged, even as the superstructure of the Cold War’s bipolarity came and went.  The U.S. Navy works the watery seam that both divides and links the planet’s northern and southern economic zones.  As these huge civilizations and individual societies bump against one another in the tectonic inevitability that is economic globalization, U.S. naval forces will play an important stabilizing role within this country’s overall foreign policy—that of a mobile, sea-based containment force. 

Response clusters such as Iraq and Yugoslavia will remain a stubborn facet of the future international security environment, representing the essence of the naval forces’ mission.  As such, it is time to end our dependency on abstract planning measures such as the 2-MTW standard, come to grips with the world as we have come to know it, and do right by our sailors and Marines. 

^[1] The 1980s conflicts (31) are Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Peru, Grenada, Falklands, Northern Ireland, Poland, Turkey-Kurds, Nagorno-Karabakh, Western Sahara, Libya, Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia, Uganda, Angola, Mozambique, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Iran-Iraq, Sri Lanka, Burma, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Cambodia, Philippines, and China-Vietnam.  The 1990s conflicts (37) are Mexico (Chiapas), Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, Peru-Ecuador, Peru, Haiti, Northern Ireland, Former Yugoslavia, Turkey-Kurds, Georgia, Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Algeria, Chad, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Liberia, Zaire, Somalia, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Burundi, Rwanda, Angola, Mozambique, Lebanon-Israel, Yemen, Iraq, Tajikistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Cambodia, Burma, China-Taiwan, Indonesia, and East Timor.

^[2] Somalia accounted for seven responses, Haiti for six, Bosnia/Kosovo for 12 and Iraq for 13.  That’s 38 total, or almost half of the decade’s total of 81 naval responses.

^[3] Find this report at <www.state.gov/www/global/terrorism/1999report>.

^[4] Demetrios G. Papademetriou, “Migration: Think Again,” Foreign Policy, no. 109 (Winter 1997-98), p. 16.

Dr. Barnett is a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, serving as a senior strategic researcher in the Decision Strategies Department of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies.  Dr. Gaffney is a research manager at The CNA Corporation, serving as Team Leader in the Center for Strategic Studies.  Professor Bradd C. Hayes provided valuable feedback.

Blast from my past: "Force Structure Will Change" (2000)

Force Structure Will Change

by

Thomas P.M. Barnett and Henry H. Gaffney, Jr.

COPYRIGHT: The U.S. Naval Institute, 2000 (October issue, pp. 30-34); reprinted with permission

Each service stands to win—or lose— 
depending on what national security visions 
the new administration embraces.  
System visions favor air forces; 
nation-state visions favor naval forces; 
subnational visions favor ground forces

In January 1993, we wrote an article in Proceedings about the election-year debate on foreign policy and its implications for U.S. Navy force structure planning.[1]  The piece later was cited as one of the journal’s best during its 125th anniversary celebration.  Emboldened by such recognition, we decided to update our analysis to see what the Clinton years have accomplished in shaping the major arguments about what sort of crises and enemies we should focus on—and plan U.S. force structure around.

This endeavor might strike some as quixotic (Clinton had no foreign policy and the world is thus a mess!), but we think the debate has faded into an inertia favoring the status quo of incremental modernization, albeit more by trial and error than by grand strategy.  In addition, we think this election’s non-debate on foreign policy demonstrates just how comfortable the public has become with a consensus that the United States is neither the global policeman nor a 911 force—that the U.S. military rather should be a selective enforcer of “mini-containment strategies” against regional troublemakers.

What does that mean for force structure planning?

• Despite calls for full-speed ahead on a revolution in military affairs (RMA), the “creeping incrementalism” approach to modernization is not going away soon.

• The defense budget definitely has a floor, and a yet-to-be-determined ceiling not far above it, and this means stable service shares, which also means each service “transforms” within its own resources.

• The Navy and Marine Corps keep the general course established back in 1992 in “. . . From the Sea”—a warfighting-focused, forward-deployed swarming force that sacrifices some numbers and technology to maintain its day-to-day readiness for quick crisis response.

Incrementalism in the Defense of Force Structure Is No Vice

Wistful Cold War memories have left many U.S. military experts and strategists yearning to continue technological revolutions.  They are alarmed by what has happened in the world in the 1990s, sensing great international disorder combined with confusion in U.S. foreign policy.  The real history is far more benign:

• Bush and his wise men ably wage the Persian Gulf War, leading many to hail a new form of high-tech war.  The administration’s real accomplishments, however, are forming the coalition that fought the war and masterfully riding along with the Soviet Bloc’s dissolution.  The New World Order really is about the North’s advanced countries cooperating in new ways, with the losers of the world relabeled as “rogues.”  Bush and Cheney start the proportional, incremental shrinkage of the Cold War force, and Desert Storm buttresses the Powell Doctrine’s “overwhelming force” concept.  Then Somalia beckons . . ..
• Clinton I interprets Bush’s New World Order too expansively, and plunges into humanitarian interventions where our national interests seem nil.  Instead of focusing on defense relations with allies, his administration plays ambulance to the Third World, turning the doctrinal spotlight on military operations other than war.  Aspin tries to set a floor on force structure in the Bottom-Up Review, but the maintenance costs associated with Cold War readiness standards create a squeeze, especially on procurement.
• Clinton II backs off from the Southern Strategy.  So it is a reluctant “yes” to the Balkans but a quiet “no” to Africa.  The Defense Department refocuses on the fault lines between North and South, and, by playing firewall, settles down to a series of mini-containments that necklace the planet—Cold Warrior reborn as Rogue Warrior.  Aspin’s force levels nearly are reaffirmed in the Quadrennial Defense Review, and the rising costs of sustaining that military squeeze both modernization and force structure.

Across all three periods, each service seeks to adapt itself to the changing security market, though largely through repackaging its product in new “expeditionary” wrappers.  But through it all, each buys—in ever-smaller numbers—those platforms and systems deemed essential to a “full-service” force, meaning one simultaneously:

• Warfighting oriented (ready for two major theater wars)
• Globally engaged and military-operations-other-than-war capable
• High-tech.

As the decade ends, the Pentagon budget features:

• A fairly static top line, as the deficit is cured and surpluses arrive
• Rock-solid service shares
• Continued force structure shrinkage as platform prices and support costs rise. 

In short, despite the hullabaloo about “the” RMA, the supposed brilliance of those “asymmetrical warriors,” and something called network-centric operations, incrementalism still rules force planning.  In addition, if you ask the services what their number one priority is, it’s always personnel and their care.

What might be the alternatives?  We see three competing national security visions, each with a geostrategic focus that favors one service marginally over time.

I. It's the Great Powers, Stupid! 

Those who view the world more as a complex system of security relationships focus on:

• How the advanced countries get along
• Number of “poles” in play (uni-, bi-, or multipolar)
• Whether Russia and China really can be brought into this playpen. 

Geostrategists worry about the big pieces and let everything else fall in line.  Sure, the G-7 runs the economic side of the house, but presidents must lead in these all-important dyad relationships, and they think Clinton played “trade president” to distraction.   This is the cry of George W. Bush’s “Vulcans,” where everything old is to be renewed again—except arms control.  Pointing to proliferation of missile technology that clearly bears the imprint of our old Communist foes, they call for national missile defense, promising (wink, nudge) to protect allies as well.

This camp sees the main foreign policy task of the next decade being the processing of Russia and China into the great power fold on our terms—meaning they learn to play by our rules.  Once the North is in order, the South should fall in line, especially since the rogues would not have anyone of consequence to supply them in their nefarious activities.  However, there is a danger in getting too explicit with Moscow and Beijing about “acceptable behavior.”  While ostensibly trying to consolidate the community of advanced countries, we may end up casting Russia and China into the gap as globalization’s bad boys.

II. Mind the Gap! 

Those who view the world more as an economic system focus on:

• Troublemakers (rogues) who challenge the status quo
• Regional balances of power that might disrupt economic flows
• Other regional disruptions that affect the global economy (e.g., a failing Indonesia).

These risk analysts treat every region with sensitivity for its unique vulnerabilities but calculate U.S. interests primarily along financial lines.  Some countries count in the globally networked economy and others do not.  Instability involving the former must be contained, but that involving the latter can be routinely ignored or treated with palliative measures.

This is the réaleconomik of the second Clinton administration after Somalia.  A successor Gore administration probably would take the same approach.  In this vision, rogues are something for the military to take care of while the rest of the government attends to domestic and international economic affairs.  Countries that disregard markets, such as Iraq and Serbia, will always represent either potential economic disruptions or something to be contained.  So when it comes to missile schemes, there is more support for theater defense than national defense.

This camp sees the main foreign policy task of the next decade being the effective management of the economic and technological gaps dividing North and South.  You keep the North’s economic expansion on track by making sure nothing—and no one—in the South messes it up.  When situations down there get really ugly, you do what you have to, but you avoid serious involvement unless key economic fault lines are involved.  This group also will agonize more about human tragedies in failing states, but they will use U.S. military forces only as catalysts to mobilize other nations’ forces.

III. Leave No Failed State Behind!

Those who view the world as a collection of “tribes” focus on:

• Rising anti-Westernism and the specter of “clashing civilizations,” with key disruptive agents being terrorists and drug traffickers
• Commodity-dependent economies withering away in globalization’s harshly competitive environment
• Societies under siege from destructive transnational forces (e.g., narcotics, AIDS, pollution, climate change). 

These social activists believe that the United States needs to care far more about the world’s “backward” economies, where most of the planet’s births and violent deaths will occur.  Forget your pork barrel Star Wars, and shift funds to something more useful!

It is the cry of Seattle Man, and it finds occasional, if sometimes ironic resonance in the campaigns of Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader.   Antiglobalization types feel pain erupting all over the world from predatory free-trade practices that expose Old Economy sheep to New Economy wolves.  They have seen the enemy and “they is us!”—the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization.  This unlikely coalition sees the adaptation of the global to the local—not vice versa—as the next's decade's main foreign policy task.  The South needs help now, and if it does not get it, it will bring its pain to us—one way or another.  Slowing down globalization’s march also will give much-needed breathing space to the New Economy’s “losers” in the North (e.g., low-tech labor).

Three Visions, Three Militaries

So to sum up the three competing political visions, either the United States concentrates on:

• The North’s advanced-power relationships—system-level vision
• The troubled “arc of instability” between North and South—the unruly nation-state level vision
• The South’s chronic pain—subnational-level vision. 

Admittedly, these are ideal representations that, while reflecting the general thrusts of various elite groups in the United States, offer few firm predictions as to how any one administration would behave once in office.  Anyway, reality usually occupies the mushy middle, where ideal types are rarely to be found. The base case always is continued incrementalism.  Still, it is useful to track how such visions would logically skew force structures to favor one service over another, for it is through such what-iffing that we learn to be careful—lest we get what we wish for.

System visions favor air forces.  The system vision employs the longest, over-the-horizon perspective.  It is concerned with maintaining the United States’ high-tech lead, and that emphasis naturally favors the Air Force as the Future Force.  This approach merges air, space, and cyberspace into a seamless whole, with the operational paradigm being that of system administrator—less warfighting Leviathan and more air traffic controller.  Interventions increasingly are virtualized: we enable or manipulate the combat expectations of others (both allies and foes), but go out of our way to avoid real in-theater presence.  This is the Kosovo air campaign taken to its logical extreme, with force structure planning emphasizing effects-based weapons, stand-off delivery, and networking capabilities.

In this vision, the United States seeks a future of niched advanced-country militaries that play “spokes” to our “hub” (i.e., we worry about major security disruptions and they take the lead on local ones).  The information umbrella replaces the nuclear one, and a Northern Hemispheric Security Zone finally realizes the Vancouver-to-Vladivostok dream of the Baker-Shevardnadze era.  Once joined in interlocking fashion, the North’s countries (United States, other NATO, Japan, Russia, and eventually China and maybe even India) effectively criminalize warfare in the South, policing all such outbreaks as simply “illegal” in the globalized economy.  This is the mergers and acquisition approach to international security—we effectively buy out our competition over time.

Nation-state visions favor naval forces.  The nation-state vision addresses the actual and potential messes created by an Iraq or other unruly state at the North-South boundary, along which much of the advanced world’s lines of communication lie.  It is concerned with maintaining the United States’ capacity to project power rapidly around the world, possibly in a unilateral fashion.  That emphasis naturally favors the Navy and Marine Corps as the Response Force.  This approach blends responses to rogue states and their putative antiaccess/asymmetrical strategies into a littoral strategy, with the operational paradigm being that of the SWAT team.  Coalitions serve as window-dressing during conflicts, but later as an important source of stay-behind, on-the-ground, peace enforcers.  Interventions are increasingly routinized and drawn out into lengthy, sequential containment operations.

This is the Iraqi containment process taken to its logical extreme, with force structure planning emphasizing platform survivability, the capacity for loitering and constant surveillance, and the day-to-day application of discrete force at will—thus to contain any and all challengers to the North’s growing Zone of Peace.  Meanwhile, the South’s Zone of Conflict is largely tolerated because it lies outside the pale of globalization’s New Economy.  In the lexicon of Thomas Friedman, the United States concentrates on making sure the “Lexus” world keeps functioning smoothly, applying military power in those few areas of the “Olive Tree” world where local instability might cross the gap.[2]  This is the outsourcing approach to international security—we do what we do best (high-end, rapid power projection) and then subcontract follow-on operations to local firms.

Subnational visions favor ground forces.  The subnational vision has the shortest and most real-time perspective of never-ending messes that lie outside the community of advanced countries.  It is concerned almost exclusively with keeping the violence “over there,” while adopting the emergency room credo of “treat ’em and street ’em.”  There is no sense of eventual rehabilitation, just a desire to stay on top of the flow by keeping sufficient numbers of boots on the ground, an emphasis that naturally favors the Army and National Guard as the Constabulary Forces.  This approach merges military operations other than war, cooperation with nongovernmental organizations and private voluntary organizations, and U.N.-sponsored peacekeeping coalitions into one big sloppy whole.  All interventions are quagmires on some level, because we always are treating chronic cases.  This is the Haiti humanitarian operation taken to its logical extreme, with force improvements emphasizing logistics, infrastructure restoration capacity, and nonlethal technologies.

In this vision, the United States seeks to prevent a future known as The Coming Chaos, where the South’s bad neighborhoods simply swell beyond capacity and eventually pour into the North’s great gated community.[3]  Some inevitabilities along this path are:

• The development of regional police forces leading to an eventual global one, probably sponsored by the advanced nations cooperating in the United Nations
• The increasing use of mercenaries or contract military personnel in peacekeeping operations
• The evolution of U.S. ground forces toward greater reliance on reserves. 

This is the privatization or divestiture approach to international security: we effectively spin off the military-operations-other-than-war portfolio from the Defense Department, with the Army’s constabulary forces as catalysts for multinational interventions that limit our involvement.

What Really Matters to Key Constituents 

How does the United States choose among these alternatives, if it decides to choose at all? We have talked mostly about the services, because they have to build and manage the forces, but there are many other players: the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), unified commanders, the defense industry, Congress, and the American public.  Practically none of these voices, however, is really engaged in the outside (i.e., economic) world or thinks in grand strategic terms.  They are fundamentally domestic or inwardly looking constituents.

Across the Clinton years, OSD has been scared away from having a focused strategic outlook.  Thus, it has let all strategies bloom in a crowded seedbed, with none emerging to full stature.  In addition, OSD suffers from an internal clash between the acquisition types, who—in cahoots with defense industry—want all the great new technologies, and the bean counters, who struggle with the services in balancing programs under the flattened top line.  In all, OSD is torn among all three visions.

The unified commanders have been searching for a post-Cold War role.  Recently they have begun presenting engagement in a diplomatic vein to justify maintenance of last year’s forces.  The problem is, they don’t know whether to engage more with new states or with old friends.  Distant from Washington, they cling to the past—stridently asking to keep the forces they used to have.  They are torn between the national and subnational visions, not quite knowing which gives them a better play in the game.

For defense industries, survival is most important.  Yet they fight for a limited pot.  They still are the source of innovation in technology, so they naturally favor the system vision.

The Hill thinks about people, bases, and the defense industry—all domestic concerns.  As deliberative bodies of elected representatives, they do not have “strategic vision.”  They repeatedly make clear that “perfect readiness is never having to use the forces overseas.”  They are constrained between the administration’s budget submission and their own budget committees.  If they had a choice, they would buy the system vision, for it means high technology and no messy international involvements.  The marginal upward changes they make to budgets are mostly in this direction, when they are not otherwise concerned with military pay and benefits.

The public is relatively indifferent to these debates.  They are torn between pride in technology and humanitarian concerns about the South.  This leaves them relatively indifferent to the state-level, mind-the-gap, vision.

What This Suggests for Naval Force Structure Planning

The defense community concerned with these debates is a very narrow group, not well connected to the public—and they are split in all three directions.  There is a great opportunity for leadership to clarify direction, but at the same time, there is no clear pressure from the external environment as to what the choice might be.

We know there are constraints that, until broken, mean all strategies cannot be serviced.  These constraints include:

• The top-line defense budget—the prospective (and dubious) federal surpluses all have been allocated by the candidates, with very little additional for defense
• The legacy forces and the personnel that operate them—one of the United States’ great strengths, but a force that constrains innovation and change
• Presence commitments abroad—for the time being, the United States will station nearly 100,000 military personnel in both Europe and East Asia, with maybe 25,000 containing Iraq
• Service shares—in the absence of clear strategic choice, they remain the same. 

As noted, the domestic drivers currently are stronger than the international ones.  Oddly enough, the domestic constituents do not line up strongly on the vision favoring naval forces, even though they enjoy a slight advantage in budget shares.

Naval forces, then, will end up hedging against several strategies—within the cited constraints.  They cannot afford the forces they have right now, much less to recapitalize them at the pace and to the extent they want.  They may well have to give up a little on both input (less of the most advanced technology) and output (more shrinkage in force structure), but this still leaves them in a great position to support the mind-the-gap vision as the United States’ premier Response Force.

^[1] Thomas P. M. Barnett and Henry H. Gaffney, “It’s Going to Be a Bumpy Ride,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, January 1993, pp. 23-26.

^[2] See Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1999). 

^[3] Read anything by Robert Kaplan and you’ll get the general picture.  See The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War (New York: Random House, 2000); or his The Ends of the Earth : From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia, a Journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy (New York: Vintage Books, 1997).

Dr. Barnett is a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, serving as a senior strategic researcher in the Decision Strategies Department of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies.  Dr. Gaffney is a research manager at The CNA Corporation, serving as Team Leader in the Center for Strategic Studies.  They would like to thank Professor Bradd C. Hayes for his feedback on an earlier draft of this essay.

Blast from my past: "Life After DoDth or: How the Evernet Changes Everything" (2000)

[Note:  This is the first published reference to the concepts that became the SysAdmin and Leviathan forces]

Life After DoDth or:

How the Evernet Changes Everything

by

Thomas P.M. Barnett

COPYRIGHT: The U.S. Naval Institute, 2000 (May issue, pp. 48-53); reprinted with permission

The relevance of DoD has declined steadily since the end of the Cold War.  Coming to grips with its passing won't be easy, but the Navy is working through the five stages of grief and toward a future in cyberspace.

First the unpleasant truth:

the Department of Defense's raison d'être died with the Cold War.  No one likes to talk about it, but that's what happened.  Created in the National Security Act of 1947, the DoD is wholly a creature of what eventually became the United States' hair-trigger during the nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union.  Prior to that, we basically stuck to the Constitution's mandate to "provide and maintain a Navy" on a constant basis and to "raise and support Armies" as the situation demanded.

The Cold War's odd combination of nonwar (we never fought the Soviets) and nonpeace (we constantly mixed it up in proxy conflicts and arms races) forced the merging of our republic's two historically distinct security roles:

• Maintain and protect our economic networks with the outside world
• Defend against direct threats to our national territory.

The two functions became one in the Cold War strategy known as containment, when we decided to extend our sense of territorial integrity to the entire Free World, thus subordinating economic rationales to security imperatives.[1]

But that strategy died with the start of the globalization era. Now, security rationales are subordinate to economic imperatives.  So why haven't we seen, as Joseph Nye might say, the "return of history" in the U.S. national security establishment?[2]  Why haven't we repealed the 1947 National Security Act and thrown away this outmoded unification of two defense concepts that constantly compete against one another—to the detriment of both?

I'm not saying jointness is a bad idea.  I'm saying it's the worst possible idea, precisely because it papers over the huge functional cleavages that logically separate the Army and Navy, leaving the Air Force to its own sad form of service schizophrenia.[3]

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  If we are going to come to grips with this death in the family, we will need to go through all the phases Elisabeth Kubler-Ross laid out in her seminal book, On Death and Dying:

1. Denial and isolation
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance (followed by Hope).[4]

The good news is that we've spent most of the 1990s flailing away at the first three; we're beginning to see symptoms of the fourth (depression, otherwise known as the shipbuilding and conversion account); and acceptance (e.g., the Secretary of the Navy's search for a "transformation strategy") seems just around the corner.  And hope?  That's the Evernet part—a back-to-the-future outcome that represents the Navy's salvation and return to its historical roots.  But before we jump ahead, let's review the purgatory that was the 1990s.

Denial & Isolation

For this part, I'll use Kenneth Waltz's "three images" framework from his influential 1954 study, Man, the State and War, in which he investigated the causes behind interstate war across three distinct levels (see Figure 1):[5] 

1. Individual
2. State
3. International system.[6]

In the Cold War, things were fairly straightforward, as both the international system (through blocs) and individuals (through ideologies) were kept in strict subordination to the state-centered superpower conflict.  So when the Pentagon looked abroad, all it saw was "us" and "them" states, with that pesky nonaligned gang in between.  The focus on states remains to this day.  I call it the "Willie Sutton effect," after the famous bandit who, when asked why he robbed banks, replied, "Because that's where the money is."  Nation-states have long served as the preeminent collection point (i.e., taxes) for collective security efforts (militaries), but that has begun to change.

The United States has not yet adjusted its state-centered defense policy to account for the two biggest security trends of the globalization era:

• Power and competition have shifted upward, from the state to the system (in the form of the global economy, culture, and communications grid).
• Violence and defense spending (e.g., small arms races, private security firms) have shifted downward, from the state to the individual.

Worldwide state defense spending and arms transfers are down dramatically from their 1987 Cold War peaks, leaving the DoD in denial about its growing disintermediation from the global security environment—in other words, its almost complete irrelevancy to the rising market of system perturbations (e.g., financial crises) and its perceived impotence in responding to the booming market of civil strife.  Meanwhile, other international and private organizations increasingly step in to provide the same sort of ground-floor chaos containment that was DoD's bread and butter during the Cold War.

Nothing signals DoD's growing isolation more than its continued insistence on focusing so much planning on the so-called rogues, who, when stacked on top of each other, don't amount to a hill of beans in this strategic environment of rapid globalization. And yet, what is the hot security topic as the new millennium dawns?  National missile defense, of course!

So where can a military fit in this new global environment, where almost all the important crises are either too global or too local for most states to tackle with military force?  In a world featuring both integrating globalization and dis-integrating localization, the great challenge facing governments is fostering compromises between the two, otherwise known as glocalization—adapting the local to the global in ways that improve the former's living standards.  Naturally, this can be fairly contentious, with many societies resisting what Thomas Friedman calls "revolution from beyond."[7]

In short, glocalization is the containment of the globalization era—sort of a dot.communism, love it or leave it.  If you have a hard time thinking of how DoD fits into a U.S. foreign policy focused on promoting this nebulous concept, then you're beginning to move into . . .

Anger

The best example of post-Cold War anger comes from the Department of the Navy, which became so mad after its "poor showing" in the Persian Gulf War that it immediately struck out in search of a post-Cold War vision.  With the Soviet blue-water navy speeding toward the dustbin of history, it was Desert Storms for as far as the eye could see.  Right?

Many of us "best and brightest" were thinking exactly that when we assembled in late 1991 for the Naval Force Capabilities Planning Effort, which eventually begat ". . . From the Sea."  Faced with a system-level security environment in which the United States reigned supreme and a subnational one in which it seemed like all hell (i.e., ethnic bloodletting) was breaking loose, most of the assembled officers expressed disgust for the dilemma the Department of the Navy faced—namely, with sea control a given, it was either "influence events ashore" or wait for a peer competitor.

Not surprisingly, we chose the former and quickly replaced the Soviets with the best enemy we could get our hands on at the time—the Air Force.  Given that Washington's way of using the Air Force for crisis response (bomb first, talk later) correlates best to the mini-Hitler type exemplified by Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic, the bureaucratic stage was set for a decade-long Navy-Air Force face-off on who could deliver the most crushing blow the fastest—or at least a sexy PowerPoint briefing "proving" the same.

The problem with our choice?  Over the course of the 1990s, it became clear that "bolt from the blue" regional crises were hardly the norm.  The large majority of DoD's crisis-response activity involved Somalia, Haiti, and the Balkans (not to mention the Saddam sequels), and not only weren't they bolts from the blue, not a single one involved an enemy of stature.  Our one encounter with a "near peer" (China over Taiwan) was mere shadow boxing—a virtual conflict befitting a virtual age.

So, after redirecting itself to battling serious hegemons, the Navy spent the entire decade doing almost anything but.  Meanwhile, the Marines chased their particular vision of the "three block war," and both Army and Air Force reconfigured to accommodate their increasingly robust military operations other than war (MOOTW) market shares.[8]

In short, the 1990s have left the Navy in a post-DoDth limbo: it buys one navy (high-tech, which drives down numbers) while operating another (global presence force, which needs big numbers).[9]   By trying to cover both bets while competing with the Air Force on rapid response, the Navy has channeled its post-Cold War anger into a negotiating stance on force structure it cannot sustain, which gets us to . . .

Bargaining

The contours of the Navy's bargaining are best captured by Hank Gaffney's notion of the "Three-Way Stretch," which basically states that the U.S. military, and the Navy in particular, is killing itself trying to cover all three slices of DoD's now highly fragmented market.[10]  Unable to move beyond DoD's functional demise, the Navy ends up replicating its death spiral, and to me, that's throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Using Waltz's three levels as touchstones, I paraphrase Gaffney as follows:

• On the system level, the Navy works hard to maintain its high-tech edge against would-be peer competitors capable of generating global instabilities.  This is the future force of "silver bullets" and networked technologies, featuring deep strike and emphasizing speed.  It is your basic research-and-development Navy, and it's very expensive.
• On the state level, the Navy struggles to maintain its bread-and-butter warfighting edge against would-be rogues capable of triggering regional instabilities.  This is the surge force full of sealift and blue-green power projection, featuring anti-antiaccess stratagems and emphasizing inevitability.  It's your Navy held to the two-major-theater-war standard, and it takes a lot of care and feeding.
• On the individual level, the Navy labors mightily to maintain its operational edge against a world of so-called transnational actors capable of instigating all manner of civil strife and nefarious activities.  This is the presence force of many platforms and MOOTW skills, featuring military-to-military ties and emphasizing operations tempo.  It's your see-the-world Navy, and it wears out faster than you think.

If all that sound like too much, it is.  The Navy's stretch not only leaves the institution increasingly exhausted but also drives its never-ending search for a grand unifying theory that will somehow result in a high-tech navy of robust projection capabilities and manned by a smaller, smarter workforce that is easier to retain.  Network-centric warfare is the theory du jour, but it will never go the distance so long as it aspires to be all things to all threats.

Just tracking the title inflation of the Department of Navy's white paper gives you all the macrostrategic data you need to make the case on overreach:

• First it was just ". . . From the Sea," which seemed simple enough.  We'd be a power-projection navy that influenced events ashore.
• Then it ballooned into "Forward . . . From the Sea," lest anyone think we weren't still the be-everywhere-all-the-time navy.
• Now we pump up the volume still more to "Power and Influence . . . From the Sea," just to make it clear that we'll remain hypertech, too.

But as any psychologist will tell you, the Superman Syndrome leads to overload, then to breakdown, and finally to . . .

Depression

It is depressing to be a sailor today—and DoD has the polling data to prove it.  Maritime service is simply too draining, too demanding, and not enough fun.  Worst yet, we are not attracting—much less keeping—the best and the brightest needed to bring network-centric warfare to reality.

A key reason it is becoming so hard to attract new talent to the Navy is that young people increasingly perceive it as a career cul-de-sac.  They want to be part of something that's growing toward a brighter future, and they just don't see one in the works for the Navy.  And they're right.

Eventually, the Navy will succumb to the strain of the three-way stretch, and when it does, it will be forced into the same box it climbed into in  ". . . From the Sea"—a state-focused crisis-response strategy.  What's wrong with that?  Plenty.

Harkening back to Waltz's three levels, power and competition migrate upward from the state to the system, and violence and defense spending migrate down to the level of the individual.  This pushes the nation-state more into the role of a relationship and information broker and away from the industrial era's resource and power brokering, signaling the advent of what Richard Rosecrance calls the "virtual state."[11]  Or, as Thomas Friedman says, globalization isn't about bigger or smaller government but about better government.[12]

But no matter how you describe it, future conflicts won't be concentrated at the level of nation states but rather at the supranational and subnational levels, where globalization and localization collide.  Sure, some Lenin-after-next may figure out how to turn all that individual anger at the system into political revolution, and yes, the information age is likely to spawn the Next Ideology, just as the Industrial Age did [13]—but these new political movements won't concentrate their strategies at the nation-state level but rather will aim above (international organizations seeking new rule sets for the global economy) or below (microstate collections of individuals looking to drop out and go it alone).

So what happens to the Navy and its sister services?  You'll see a clear division of labor emerge, with each given its own corner of DoD's highly fragmenting market:

• The Air Force becomes the future high-tech force that rules air, space, and cyberspace and plays "system administrator" to the global security environment.
• The Navy and Marine Corps become the classic surge crisis-response force that separates belligerents in state-on-state war and punishes would-be hegemons who break the rules.
• The Army becomes the boots-on-the-ground, day-to-day, low-tech presence force that works in those offline regions where backward types still fight over little bits of land.

Sound okay?

Not by my way of thinking, for I see the Air Force's market as booming, the one on which the U.S. government focuses a lot of attention trying to keep virtual systemic crises—usually triggered by financial tumults—from blossoming into real conflicts among states.  In comparison, although the Army's market probably won't grow, it is historically stable.  Globally there have been a good three to four dozen conflicts every year since World War II that generate 1,000 or more casualties.[14]  And while these conflicts are real, U.S. interests tend to be virtual, affording us the flexibility to choose the ones we want to deal with (e.g., Bosnia and Kosovo) and to turn a blind eye to those we don't (e.g., Rwanda and the Congo).

Meanwhile, the Navy and Marines' market will slowly dry up.  The early 20th century's high volume of state-on-state warfare will not carry over into the 21st.  Nuclear weapons ended great power-versus-great power warfare back in 1945, and as John Keegan predicts, the future belongs far more to civil strife than traditional war.[15]

But there is hope, especially once you move toward . . .

Acceptance

Security in the future will a lot broader than anything a one-stop DoD can provide.  The signs are all around us:

• The biggest system instability of the 1990s—the global financial crisis of 1997-98—showed who is really in charge of deterring international chaos:  the Department of the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and the International Monetary Fund.[16]
• The Y2K Problem, described as the biggest global management challenge since World War II, saw DoD play a minor supporting role to corporate turnaround specialist John Koskinen's star turn, signaling a new era in government-industry cooperation on computer security.[17]
• The G-7 expands to G-8 and now to G-20, leaving the United Nations, NATO, and the rest of the politico-military alliance system in its wake while demonstrating the supremacy of economics in creating summit opportunities today (transforming arms control into the "Waldo" of the international scene).

In general, more and more of DoD's assumed "lesser includeds" (terrorism, computer hacking, electronic warfare) are being reclassified by an increasingly net-aware Washington as global law enforcement areas, with the relevant federal agencies aggressively building networks of international cooperation, buttressed by a worldwide explosion in private security firms.  Increasingly, when one scans the international security environment's to-do list, DoD looks like a cyber-age dinosaur.

I see merit in the efforts of the Secretary of the Navy and others to plot out a "transformation strategy," but transform to what?  Too much of what I see coming out of the Pentagon today seems hopelessly focused on future high-tech shootouts among trade-bloc-toting hyperpowers.  I'll hold open the possibility that Globalization II (1946 and counting) could disintegrate in ways similar to Globalization I (1870-1929), but we need a game plan that covers both the mother-of-all-global-financial-meltdowns scenario and the far greater likelihood that it is the international security environment itself that is being revolutionized and not merely DoD's increasingly irrelevant tool kit.

Better yet, we need two separate game plans.  Accept that notion—and with it the functional demise of DoD—and the Department of the Navy finally moves out from the Cold War's shadow and into the light of the globalization era.  We are going to have to make the break sometime, so why not talk about it openly and plan ahead?

The Coming Evernet

The planet is undergoing a broad economic transformation that is loosely described as the rise of the New Economy.[18]  This jarring makeover of virtually every business model we hold dear is exemplified by the astonishingly global spread of the Internet and e-commerce.  But that is just the tip of the iceberg in DoD's path, for whenever economics changes, politics must follow.

The defining achievement of the New Economy in the globalization era will be the Evernet, a downstream expression of today's Internet, which most of us still access almost exclusively through bulky desktop personal computers anywhere from a few minutes to several hours each day.  Over the next ten or so years, this notion of being "online" versus "offline" will completely disappear, because of:

• The computing industry moving to molecular-based computer circuitry
• The breaking up of the desktop computer's functions into a myriad of tiny gadgetry that humans will wear or have embedded throughout their living spaces and work environments—and ultimately even their bodies via nanotechnology
• The maturation of ultra wideband wireless technologies that link all of these sensors, gadgets, satellites, computers, and grids
• The continued development and extension of the earth-based portion of the Global Information Infrastructure (GII), especially the so-called last mile
• The coming revolution in near-space (earth-to-moon) information infrastructure—quadrupling of satellites by 2010, then vast waves of nano/picosatellites—that provide real-time wireless coverage across the entire planet
• The migration of vast portions of human commerce, social, educational, religious and political activity to the Internet and World Wide Web, which come to encompass all current personal and mass communication media.[19]

In other words, we go from today's limited-access Internet to an Evernet with which we will remain in a state of constant connectivity.  We will progress from a day-to-day reality in which we must choose to go online to one in which we must choose to go offline.  This is not some distant fantasy world.  Almost all the technology we need for the Evernet exists today.  It mostly is just a matter of achieving connectivity.

The rise of the Evernet will be humanity's greatest achievement to date and will be universally recognized as our most valued planetary asset or collective good.  Downtime, or loss of connectivity, becomes the standard, time-sensitive definition of a national security crisis, and protection of the Evernet becomes the preeminent security task of governments around the world.  Ruling elites will rise and fall based on their security policies toward, and the political record on, the care and feeding of the Evernet, whose health will be treated by mass media as having the same broad human interest and import as the weather (inevitably eclipsing even that).

Eventually, the Evernet and the Pentagon will collide, with the most likely trigger being some electronic Pearl Harbor, where DoD is unmasked as almost completely irrelevant to the international security environment at hand.[20]

The result?  DoD will be broken into two separate organizations:

• The Department of Global Deterrence (DGD), to focus on preventing and, if necessary, fighting large-scale conventional and/or weapons-of-mass-destruction-enhanced warfare among nation-states
• The Department of Network Security (DNS), to focus on maintaining the United States' vast electronic and commercial connectivity with the outside world, including protection and large-scale emergency reconstitution of the Evernet, and to perform all the standard crisis-response activity short of war (with a ballooning portfolio in medical).

In effect, we will split DoD into a warfighting force (DGD) and a global emergency-response force (DNS), with the latter aspiring to as much global collaboration as possible (ultimately disintermediating the United Nations) and the former to virtually none.  To put it another way, DGD is deterrence; DNS is assurance.

Who gets the "kids" in this divorce?

DGD includes:

• U.S. Army (ground & armored)
• U.S. Air Force (combat)
• U.S. Navy (strategic)

DNS includes:

• U.S. Army (airborne)
• U.S. Air Force (mobility and space)
• U.S. Marine Corps
• U.S. Navy (rest)
• Air/Army National Guards.[21]
• DNS also picks up the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S. Information Agency, U.S. Customs, and a host of other specialized units from other federal agencies (e.g., Justice, Treasury).

DNS will discard the traditional notion of military service separate from civilian life.  For most personnel, it will adopt a consultancy model, whereby the agency rents career time versus buying entire lifetimes (essentially the National Guard model).  DNS's officer corps will remain career managers, but with frequent real-world tours of duty in technology, industrial, and business fields.  This organization will be networked in the extreme, because networks will be what it is all about.  This means no separate legal system and the end to posse comitatus restrictions.

New Rules for a New Navy

This vision of the future probably will strike many as far too revolutionary, and much of what I describe is admittedly beyond the current bureaucratic purview of a Secretary of Defense, Chief of Naval Operations, or Commandant of the Marine Corps.  Nonetheless, there are steps the Department of the Navy can take to position itself for what lies ahead:

• Focus on conflict paradigms favoring the many and the cheap over the few and the costly.[22]
• Focus network-centric warfare on crisis prevention and termination, leaving high-end conflict to others.
• Reach out to and build cooperation with all federal agencies that provide system- and individual-level security services; use military-to-military programs to do the same abroad.
• Accept that external information-technology networking is more important than internal networking (no LAN is an island).
• Get involved in global information infrastructure security efforts in every way possible.
• Get involved in space control in every way possible.
• Go as lean as possible on sea control, freeing resources for space and cyberspace.
• Rethink aircraft carriers and attack subs into cyber-age motherships, but everything else is up for grabs.[23]
• Recast naval information warfare to focus more on generating and reconstituting networks than on taking them down.
• Don't indulge the naval strategic community, for they must eventually leave the nest.

Hope for the Afterlife

When Encarta first appeared on the scene a few years ago, Encyclopedia Britannica blithely brushed off the notion that this upstart could ever threaten its position as the preeminent marketer of English-language reference compilations.  After all, Encyclopedia Britannica was the industry standard—the best seller of hard-copy reference material marketed directly to households.

At first, Encyclopedia Britannica simply could not imagine being disintermediated from its customer base, because it simply could not reimagine themselves as anything but the seller of hard copies.  Today, Encyclopedia Britannica is on the web, practically giving away the same information for which it previously charged so much.  Apparently, they finally reimagined themselves into some new and different—perhaps just in time.

So ask yourself, Department of the Navy, what is it that you really do?  Are you just ships and sea control?  Can you remember life before DoD?  Can you imagine a sweet hereafter?  And what you would do once you got there?

The Navy's new holy trinity is sea, space, cyberspace.  I suggest we all start worshipping today.

[1]    Extending the nuclear umbrella to both Western Europe and Japan is the best example of our redefinition of territorial integrity. The Marshall Plan, the promotion of a military-industrial complex, and the severe restrictions on trade with the East Bloc are just some of the examples of subordinating economics to security.

[2]    Joseph S. Nye, Jr., "In Europe, The Return of History," The New York Times, 26 November 1989. 

[3]    Examples of USAF schizophrenia are found in its internal debates over manned versus unmanned, air versus space, bombers versus fighters.

[4] Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth, On Death and Dying (reprint, New York: Collier, 1997).

[5]    A version of this slide first appeared in my The U.S. Marine Corps and Non-Lethal Weapons in the 21st Century: Annex B—Briefing Slides, Quick-Response Report 98-10 (Alexandria VA: Center for Naval Analyses, September 1998).

[6]    Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954).

[7]    Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999), ch. 8.

[8]    Military operations other than war, which I define broadly as all operations short of war—meaning, if it ain't called a "war," it's a MOOTW.  The Air Force's reconfiguration is seen in its reorganization into air expeditionary forces, and the Army's comes in its moves to go as light and mobile as possible. We can argue whether either service made the moves willingly or under duress, but they clearly are adjusting to changes in their respective "markets."

[9]    For analysis of this notion, see Henry H. Gaffney Jr., Thomas P.M. Barnett, and Micky Tripathi, Three Visions of the Future With Corresponding Naval Force Structures, Annotated Briefing 95-100 (Alexandria VA: Center for Naval Analyses, October 1995).

[10]    H. H. Gaffney, "Alternative Evolutions of U.S. Forces," CNA, 99-1364, Working Paper of December 1999.

[11]    Richard Rosecrance, The Rise of the Virtual State: Wealth and Power in the Coming Century (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

[12]    Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization, ch. 7.

[13]    On these speculations, see Graham E. Fuller, "The Next Ideology," Foreign Policy, Spring 1995, pp. 145-58, and Fred C. Ikle, "The Next Lenin: On the Cusp of Truly Revolutionary Warfare," The National Interest, Spring 1997, pp. 9-19.

[14]    Thanks to Art Money, ASD C3I, for this observation.

[15]    See "War Ca Change: The End of Great Power Conflict," Foreign Affairs, May/June 1997, pp. 113-116.

[16]    See Joshua Cooper Ramo, "The Three Marketeers," Time, 15 February 1999, pp. 34-42.

[17]    Look for future international computer security regimes to be even more industry dominated, as network-monitoring services outgrow the military and large corporation markets to encompass e-commerce and the Internet as a whole.  The security model here?  ADT Security Services—the home burglar alarm company.  See John Markoff, "Beyond Computers in Computer Security," The New York Times, 3 April 2000.

[18]    The best description of the New Economy is found in Kevin Kelly's New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (New York: Viking Penguin, 1998).

[19]    For an excellent and imaginative description of this future reality, see Michael Vlahos, "Entering the Infosphere," Journal of International Affairs, Spring 1998, pp. 497-525.  The proposed merger of AOL with Time Warner is a serious first step in the direction of the Evernet.

[20]    Thanks to Dave Freymann for the idea of the "electronic Pearl Harbor." For the briefest hint at this future, see Thomas L. Friedman, "Boston E-Party" The New York Times, 1 January 2000.

[21]    See Thomas P.M. Barnett and Henry H. Gaffney Jr., A Critique of the National Defense Panel Report, Occasional Paper (Alexandria VA: Center for Naval Analyses, April 1998).

[22]    See Thomas P.M. Barnett, "The Seven Deadly Sins of Network-Centric Warfare," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, January 1999, pp. 45-47.

[23]    I applaud VAdm. Arthur Cebrowski's effort to reimagine surface combatants via the Streetfighter concept.  See VAdm. A.K. Cebrowski, USN, and Capt. Wayne Hughes Jr., USN (Ret.), "Rebalancing the Fleet," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, November 1999, pp. 31-34.

Dr. Barnett is a senior strategic researcher at the U.S. Naval War College.  Visit him at www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Thinktank/6926.  He would like to thank John Dickmann, Dave Freymann, Hank Gaffney, Bradd Hayes, Hank Kamradt, Lawrence Modisett, Pat Pentland, and Mitzi Wertheim for their feedback on earlier drafts of this essay.

Blast from my past: The Seven Deadly Sins of Network-Centric Warfare

The Seven Deadly Sins of Network-Centric Warfare

by Thomas P.M. Barnett

COPYRIGHT: The U.S. Naval Institute, 1999 (January issue, pp. 36-39); reprinted with permission

Most of us . . . read Vice Admiral Art Cebrowski's seminal 1998 Proceedings article on network-centric warfare (NCW), and if some detected a confidence too bold, that is only to be expected.  Visions of the future invariably rankle, especially when they seem inevitable.  Quoting Liddell Hart, "The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military is getting an old one out," Admiral Cebrowski and coauthor John Garstka threw down the gauntlet and dared anyone to prove them wrong.

Would that I could, but the best I can muster is a devil's advocate take on what I see as network-centric warfare's seven deadly sins.  Note that I don't say "mortal sins."  As with any transgression, penance can be made.

1. Lust

NCW Longs for an Enemy Worthy of Its Technological Prowess

If absence makes the heart grow fonder, network-centric warfare is in for a lot of heartbreak, because I doubt we will ever encounter an enemy to match its grand assumptions regarding a revolution in military affairs.  The United States currently spends more on its information technology than all but a couple of great powers spend on their entire militaries.  In a world where rogue nations typically spend around $5 billion a year on defense, NCW is a path down which only the U.S. military can tread.

Meanwhile, our relatively rich allies fret about keeping up, wondering aloud about a day when they won't be able even to communicate with us.  These states barely can afford the shrinking force structures they now possess, and if network-centric warfare demands the tremendous pre-conflict investments in data processing that I suspect it does, then the future of coalition warfare looks bleak indeed.  Not only will our allies have little to contribute to this come-as-you-are party, they won't even be able to track the course of the "conversation."

As for potential peer competitors, forget about it—and I am not just talking money.  I am a great believer in the "QWERTY effect," by which technological pathways are locked in by market victories of one standard over another.[1]   No one would argue against the notion that the United States is QWERTY Central, or that our military feeds off that creativity.  So the reality facing, any potential enemy is that he either has to get in line behind our QWERTY dominance or satisfy himself with chintzy knockoffs from our far-distant past.  So when Iran gets itself some North Korean missile technology, let's remember that it is only a poor copy of old Chinese technology, which is a poor copy of old Soviet technology, which is a poor derivative of old Nazi-era German technology—and, as everyone knows, our German scientists were better than their German scientists!  This is why proliferation is always a lot slower than suggested by too many hyperbolic experts.

Once you get past the potential peer competitors, you are entering the universe of smaller, rogue enemies that many security experts claim will be able to adapt all this information technology into a plethora of brilliant asymmetric responses—the Radio Shack scenario.  Frankly, it stretches my imagination to the limit to conjure up seriously destabilizing threats from resource-poor, small states, unless we let our lust for a bygone era distort our preparations for a far different future.

2. Sloth

NCW Slows the U.S. Military's Adaptation to a MOOTW World

Military operations other than war (MOOTWs) are the closest thinly to a sure-bet future the U.S. military faces right now, and network-centric warfare does not yet answer that mail.  Beyond the affordability issues, there is the larger question of what "networked" should mean for the U.S. military:  Wiring-up among ourselves?  Or wiring ourselves up more to the world outside? 

This is not an esoteric question for naval forces, because I see a future in which the establishment of, and support to, information networks is the crucial U.S. naval product delivered overseas to internal crises, where confusion, complexity, and chaos are the norm.  We are far more likely to be called on to be the deliverers of clarity and context than sowers of blindness and vertigo, and we are far more likely to be asked to settle down all sides in a conflict than to decimate one particular side.  This is where NCW's "lock-out" phraseology misleads: we will be interested in opening up pathways to resolution, not closing down pathways of conflict.  That reality speaks to non-lethal approaches, reversible effects, and keeping open the channels of communication.

Increasingly, naval forces will be called on to serve as a "node connector," rather than a "node destroyer."  I am talking not only about bringing crisis-involved regions back on line, but also about the military acting as Network Central for the wide array of U.S. and international agencies that populate any U.S.-led response to complex humanitarian emergencies.  Just as important as our ability to talk among ourselves during, the generation and coordination of large-scale violence will be our ability to generate and coordinate the conversations of many outsiders in the prevention of small-scale violence.

Correctly focused, network-centric warfare would allow the U.S. military to come into any crisis situation and establish an information umbrella to boost the transparency of everyone's actions.  Incorrectly focused, it might hamstring us along the lines of the Vietnam War.  In sum, NCW's quest for information dominance is self-limiting in an era that will see the U.S. military far less involved in network wars than in mucking around where the network is not.

3. Avarice

NCW Favors the Many and Cheap; the U.S. Military Prefers the Few and Costly

Many experts rightly claim that network-centric warfare is nothing new as far as the U.S. Navy is concerned.  By its nature, our worldwide, blue-water Navy always has been a networking environment.  Of all the major services, it should find the onset of NCW least discombobulating.  But it is no secret to anyone who has followed Navy force structure decision making this decade that we consistently have sacrificed ship numbers to technology, even as we decry the resulting stress on operational tempo and global presence. 

What we are ending up with is a Navy poorly situated for an NCW era in which the network's crucial strength is its flexibility to degrade gracefully.  Some point out that cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles are good fixes because they allow surface combatants to operate in a standoff mode.  But the future fleet cannot consist of a dozen huge platforms sitting in the middle of the ocean remotely directing operations because we as a country cannot risk losing any of these hyper-tech behemoths.  NCW's bottom line must be that no node can be worth more than the connectivity it provides.

Because we are far more likely to encounter targets of influence operating in the "few and cheap" paradigm, what we should bring to the table are "the many" as opposed to "the costly."  Why?  The few-and-costly approach puts us in no-win situations, where our entry into crises is self-limited by our tendency—and our opponent's knowledge of that tendency—to treat the loss of any significant network node as grounds for one of two equally bad pathways: escalation or withdrawal.  Because our interests typically are limited, escalation usually is the last thing we want.  But because the world values our Leviathan-like role as global force of first response and last resort, a pattern of withdrawals over relatively small losses costs us dearly over the long run.  A superpower navy too valuable to risk force structure losses is not one worth having.  Does that mean we risk more lives?  Only if we insist that the U.S. Navy primarily is about projecting destructive power ashore.

4. Pride

NCW's Lock-Out Strategies Resurrect Old Myths about Strategic Bombing

Ever since Giulio Douhet's Command of the Air (1921), we have heard that massed effects against an enemy's centers of gravity can lead swiftly to bloodless victory.  And every war since then has seen this theory's vigorous application and subsequent refutation.  Yet the notion persists and now finds new life in network-centric's "lock-out" strategy.  Whether NCW's proponents admit it or not, what lies at the core of this strategy is the spurious notion that punishment equals control.

Can we, by destroying our enemy's information technology "village," somehow save it?  I think not.

First, one man's information warfare is another man's international terrorism.  If any hostile power tried even a smidgen of what we propose to do en masse via NCW, we would be hurling all sorts of war crimes accusations.  The collateral damage associated with this "information technology decapitation" strategy simply is too complex to control from afar.  Who dies?  Society's weakest and most vulnerable.  Unless we are talking total war or some antiseptic battlefield out in the middle of nowhere, we need to own up to the reality that such massed effects are closer to weapons of mass destruction than we care to admit.

Second, our bomb-damage assessment capabilities are nowhere near capable enough to measure the massed effects of NCW's souped-up brand of information warfare.  Some assume that the smaller a society's information technology quotient, the greater our ability to understand the impact of information warfare.  But in my mind, less information technology equals greater social capacity for low-tech work-arounds that either negate or complicate information warfare immeasurably.

Third, while bowing to complexity theory, NCW adherents toss it out the window once they rhapsodize about lock-out strategies.  Somehow, our mastery of our enemy's complexity will translate into a capacity to steer his actions down one path or another, despite the fact that NCW's game plan includes large amounts of irreversible impact.  What we may well end up with in some blossoming conflict is a "dialogue of the deaf" that precludes effective communication with the other side concerning conflict resolution or—more important—avoidance of unnecessary escalation.  And when that happens, we may wonder which side really had its pathways locked out.

Fourth, NCW is guilty of mirror imaging: we theorize about our own information technology vulnerability and then assume it is the same for others.  In reality, our distributed society is far stronger than we realize.  In truth, is there any other country in the world where you would prefer to live through a natural disaster?  As for less-advanced countries, our arrogant assumptions about their limited work-around capacity say more about us than about them.

Fifth, to the extent that network-centric's immense capabilities can be harnessed to a lock-out strategy, the military needs to relate better to the universe of relevant data and subject-matter experts outside the usual realm of political-military thinking.  We do not possess the decision-assessment tools at this point to steer an opponent via information dominance.

5. Anger

NCW's Speed-of-Command Philosophy Can Push Us into Shooting First and Asking Questions Later

The unspoken assumption concerning speed of command seems to be that because we receive and process data faster, we have to act on it faster.  Not surprisingly, this virtuous circle can turn vicious rather quickly if commanders allow themselves to become slaves to their own computers, which essentially are dumb machines that count incredibly fast.  Rushing to bad judgment is the danger.

Most worrisome are network-centric's assumptions concerning getting inside the enemy's decision loop.  This makes sense as a goal, but the real focus should be on what we do once inside, not just on the blind pursuit of faster response times.  Why?  We always are talking about potential enemies with less advanced information technology architectures, so the potential for miscommunication and misperception is huge.  We may find ourselves acting so rapidly within our enemy's decision loop that we largely are prompting and responding to our own signals, which our beleaguered target cannot process.  In short, we could end up like Pavlov's dog, ringing his own bell and wondering why he's salivating so much.

It takes two to tango, so, yes, we want sufficient speed of command to get inside our opponent's decision loop, but too much speed turns what we hope is a stimulus-response interaction into a self-stimulating frenzy.  The potential irony is telling:

We rapidly fire signals to a target of influence, who does not pick them up, in part because of the strategic blindness we have inflicted on him.

• Our target’s lack of response is interpreted as signifying "X" intent.
• We respond to perceived intent "X" with signal "Y," which also is missed by our target, who, perhaps, is just getting a grip on earlier signals.
• Our target's response "Z" seems incomprehensible, or we assume it is a rejection of sorts to our previous signals.
• Before you know it, we are way beyond "Z" and into some uncharted territory, but we are making incredible time!

The networked organization's great advantage is that the processing and distribution of data are sped up considerably.  What this should translate into is increased time for analysis and contemplation of appropriate response, not a knee-jerk ratcheting down of response time.  The goal is not to shorten our decision-making loop, but to lengthen it, and, by doing so, improve it.  Otherwise, all we are doing is generating two suboptimal decisions to his one.

Now, some will declare that the enemy's decision loop is being shortened by his increasingly rapid incorporation of information technology into his command-and-control architecture.  But this Chicken Little approach misleads: yes, he will improve his decision-loop timelines constantly, and so should we.  But the point is not to engage in some never-ending speed race with our own worst-case fears, but rather to concentrate NCW on how best to exploit the delta between our loop time and his.  Speed is not the essence here, only the means to an end.  Forget that and you might as well be acting in anger.

6. Envy

NCW Covets the Business World's Self-Synchronization

There is no defense establishment more concerned with everyone singing off the same sheet of music than the U.S. military.  Why?  No military in the world seeks to decentralize crucial decision-making power as much.  It is both our calling card and our greatest weapon—our operational flexibility.  So if any military will adapt itself to NCW's ambitious goal of self-synchronization, it will be us, though we are not likely to reach the ideal state of affairs desired by network-centric warfare, which I believe seeks a dangerous slimming down of the observe-orient-decide-act (OODA) loop. 

The implied goal of self-synchronization is that information technology will facilitate such a rapid movement of information as to obviate the time requirements of the "00" portion, allowing commanders to exploit speed of command.  But in my mind, NCW's capacity to collapse timelines for the processing of operational data should lengthen the observe and orient portions of the loop, not encourage their virtual disappearance by outsourcing that cognitive function to silicon units.  During the Cold War, a sort of "DADA loop" was forced on the U.S. military by certain bolt-from-the-blue warfighting scenarios involving the Soviet Union.  But I am hard-pressed to envision post-Cold War scenarios where the U.S. military should be encouraged to deemphasize the rational thinking that must periodically interrupt whatever courses of action our commanders in the field are empowered to pursue.

NCW's envy for the business world's market-responsive notion of self-synchronization is understandable, for there are few things in this world as complex as a major military operation.  But this envy is misplaced; we create governments to deal precisely with those thorny aspects of social life that we do not trust private firms to manage under the ultimate self-synchronizing motivation known as profit seeking.  And among the thorniest aspects are those we reserve for the military, entrusted as it is with the assets that generate big violence.

In addition, the crisis scenarios the U.S. military faces grow ever more ambiguous as far as U.S. national interests are concerned.  Other than a rerun of Desert Storm, I don't see any crises where the United States would be well served by its military focusing on self-synchronization.  A MOOTW world should encourage greater externally focused networking.  So even if the U.S. military could achieve self-synchronization, neither the likely scenarios nor the partners we engage in them are well suited to this slam-bang approach.  In fact, in many MOOTW scenarios, it is the military that should use its mighty information technology power to generate the "00" portion of the decision loop for others who ultimately will take the lead in deciding and acting.

7. Gluttony

NCW's Common Operating PictureCould Lead to Information Overload

The term "common operating picture" is apt for network-centric's vision of all players at all levels working off the same mental model.  There is little doubt that computer-mediated visual presentations will shape much of the commander's perception of operational realities.  That, in and of itself, is not new.

What is new is the potential for inundating all participants with an ever-increasing flow of data masquerading as information because it has been slickly packaged within the common operating picture.  The danger lies in the picture's collapsing all participants' perceptions of what is tactical versus operational versus strategic, and, by doing so, creating strong incentives for all to engage in information overload in an attempt to maintain their bearings in this overly ambitious big picture.  In sum, I am concerned that the push for speed of command and self-synchronization will drive all participants to an over-reliance on the common operating picture as a shared reality that is neither shared nor real. 

The common operating picture cannot really be shared in the sense that ownership will remain a top-down affair.  What is scary about NCW's ambition is the strain it may put on commanders at various levels to integrate the commander's intent from all other commanders and not just up the chain of command.  NCW promises to flatten hierarchies, but the grave nature of military operations may push too many commanders into becoming control freaks, fed by an almost unlimited data flow. In the end, the quest for sharing may prove more disintegrating than integrating.

The infusion of information technology into hierarchical organizations typically reduces the traditional asymmetries of information that define superior-subordinate relationships.  Taken in this light, the common operating picture is an attempt by military leaders to retain the high ground of command prerogative—a sort of nonstop internal spin control by commanders on what is necessarily a constantly breaking story among all participants, given their access to information that previously remained under the near-exclusive purview of superior officers.

That gets me to the question of the common operating picture's "realness," for it suggests that the picture will be less a raw representation of operational reality than a command-manipulated virtual reality.  At worst, I envisage command staff engaging in a heavy-handed enforcement of commander's intent, all in the name of shaping and protecting the common operating picture.

The temptation of information gluttony always will be with NCW.  Salvation lies in the concept of information sufficiency by level of command.

*                    *                    *

I seek not to praise network-centric warfare, nor to bury it.  To the extent that NCW marries the military to a networking paradigm, it moves America's defense establishment toward a future I view as inevitable. However, focusing NCW on the application of large-scale violence, or past wars, is a mistake—especially for naval forces. On a global scale, both organized violence and defense spending have migrated below the level of nation-states. For our military to remain relevant, it must reach out to that subnational environment. Networking is the answer, but it needs to be focused outwardly.  This was the natural role of naval forces in U.S. history.  It can be again, but only if the Navy frees itself from its Pacific War past and pointless competition with the Air Force in power projection.

[1] QWERTY refers to the first six letters on the upper left of the typewriter keyboard.  This layout was adopted in the 19th century to minimize jamming of mechanical striking arms.  It quickly became the universal standard and remains so to this day, despite being less efficient than other designs.

Dr. Barnett holds an appointment as Professor and Senior Decision Researcher at the Decision Support Department, Center for Naval Warfare Studies, U.S. Naval War College.  This article is adapted from an essay he wrote for the Center for Naval Analyses, where he served on the Research Staff from 1990 to 1998.  Dr. Barnett holds a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University.  He would like to thank the following individuals for their comments on earlier drafts: Jack Batzler, Lyntis Beard, Gary Federici, Hank Gaffney, Bradd Hayes, Lawrence Modisett, Hank Kamradt, Rob Odell, Pat Pentland, and Mike McDevitt.

Blast from my past: "It's Going to Be a Bumpy Ride" (1993)

It's Going to Be a Bumpy Ride by Thomas P.M. Barnett and Henry H. Gaffney, Jr. The Navy is in for some heavy seas if its leaders fail  to adopt a defense vision that gets them in the Washington game  and positions them well with the star players—Senator Sam Nunn,  Congressman Les Aspin, General Colin Powell, and President-elect Bill Clinton COPYRIGHT: The U.S. Naval Institute, 1993 (January issue, pp. 23-26); reprinted with permission Conspicuously absent . . . from this year's election cycle was a coherent debate on the future of U.S. defense policy. Admittedly, in light of this country's domestic difficulties and the general improvement in the world security situation, this debate does not warrant priority right now. But since further big cuts in the defense budget seem inevitable—with renewed efforts to reduce the deficit and fund domestic programs—the next administration and Congress must provide some vision and fashion some policy consensus quickly if they are to avoid mindless reductions by budgetary incrementalism. Actually, the term "incrementalism" is misleading. When the budget agreement's "fire walls" and "caps" dissolve, come consideration of the fiscal year 1994 budget, Congress will no longer be restrained from shifting defense funds to domestic programs. Capitol Hill may balance the reductions, because many principals there still believe in a strong national defense. But these cuts are likely to be anything but incremental. And if Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) gets his way, a serious revision of roles and missions among the services will turn a downward glide path into dramatic changes. This is going to be one bumpy ride, and where the defense establishment will end up remains very sketchy.   Three Defense Visions Three possible defense visions are out there, each suggesting a certain slant for military force structure into the next century. The incoming administration of President Bill Clinton and the new Congress, however, eventually will have to sort out just one, since they and the rest of us believe we cannot afford all three. The visions carry the marks of how far their advocates peer into the future: The Transitioneers focus on the near term. They see a world minus the Soviets as still quite dangerous and seek to "assure the transition" to a safer era. The Big Sticks look ahead to the next regional dustup. They foresee some dangerous conflicts that could upset the new world order, and echo Theodore Roosevelt's advice to "speak softly and carry a big stick." The Cold Worriers take the long view. They worry that internal preoccupation will lead to the dismantling of U.S. military strength, especially in technology, which will render us helpless against the next "global threat," however remote that may seem today. While the camps differ in the length of their visions, their arguments intersect over three basic questions: How much should we reduce the military forces inherited from the Cold War? How should we operate these forces in the new era? Most important, what future world do we seek, and how does military power help us get there? The Transitioneers The Transitioneers' answer to the size question is that the United States should hold onto what has proved to be the best military force in the world by protecting force structure over procurement. Their enemy is global fragmentation, punctuated by ethnic and religious conflicts. The Transitioneers' nightmare is the "Balkans scenario" spreading into the former Soviet republics, where the nukes are. The big backers here have been the George Bush White House and most top Pentagon officials, and their attitude has been "Why change a winning hand?" As for operations, the Transitioneers emphasize forward presence and quick crisis response. That means troops stationed abroad and naval forces operating around the globe. Examples are "911 calls" involving humanitarian relief, antiterrorism, and rescuing U.S. citizens. Peacetime operations are the crux here, with Transitioneers focusing their day-to-day activities on hotspots of the world. Lately the Persian Gulf has been the focus, but now they are also agonizing over how the United States and other nations might seek to use military power to resolve the appalling situations in the Balkans and Somalia. It is not easy to be the 911 force-cum-SWAT team. The Transitioneers' long-run strategy is maintaining U.S. access and influence around the globe. Why? The new world order is very shaky, despite the thwarting of aggression in the Gulf War. If this order is to survive at all, the world's sole superpower must lead the ongoing, often painful transition from the still-dissolving Cold War status quo. TheTransitioneers' mantras are influence, stabilization, and deterrence, none of which is working in Yugoslavia or Nagorno-Karabakh right now, but may be working in Korea, Cambodia, and Central America. The Big Sticks The Big Sticks' approach to the size of military forces is that the United States should preserve the combat power needed to disarm regional bullies threatening our vital interests. Potential enemies include such well-known troublemakers as North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and Libya. Worst cases here are proliferation combined with religious radicalism—the nightmare of a united "Islamic Belt" stretching from Casablanca to Jakarta, armed with nukes. The Big Sticks' strongest advocates are Congressman Les Aspin (D-WI) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell, and their shared attitude is "Let's make sure America wins big when the call goes out." This sits well with younger officers and their families, who want to strike hard, not get killed, and come home soon, if they have to fight at all. For operations, the Big Sticks stress the surge of power projection with bombers, naval forces, and expeditionary land forces. The concept here is to strike out from the U.S. homeland, dominate any regional battle space, and take the offensive at the time of our choosing. They would ensure that ample investments be made in mobility and lift. Day-to-day operations matter less to them than "regional contingencies," with Operation Desert Storm as the template. The Big Sticks focus on the Middle East, but they will go anywhere, anytime. Citing the superpower status of the United States as prerequisite for any new world order, the Big Sticks focus on preserving core combat capabilities despite declining budgets. These warfighters look to scare off or squash most aspiring regional kingpins. In their view, this approach also keeps the peace so countries that wish to live in peace and prosper can forgo military buildups of their own. But the Big Sticks believe in international support and coalition operations, and will take the time to line one up before striking. The public reports on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Guidance reflect this rationale. Regional aggressors are anathema to the Big Sticks, while their mantras are credibility and decisive force. The Cold Worriers The Cold Worriers' view on the size of military forces is that the United States must move from guns to butter and renew itself internally to secure its continued global leadership. The enemy is uncertainty, plus U.S. complacency and retreat from the world. Their nightmare is a fiscally frail United States yielding to economic powerhouses in Europe and Asia. The Cold Worriers' loudest proponents are congressmen whose attitude is "Let's meet our real national security needs by putting America first." While not isolationist, the Cold Worriers show little interest in managing current events with military power. Ethnic troubles? See Los Angeles. Proliferation? Try handguns, teenage pregnancies, AIDS, and crack. More internal definitions of national security count here, such as Senator Nunn's plan to have military personnel augment social programs. Viewing industrial jobs, military bases, and reserves as important political links to the public, the Cold Worriers turn the U.S. vision inward to its slow growth rate and decaying infrastructure. For Cold Worriers, stemming global chaos is secondary to getting our own house in order. As for regional troublemakers, Team USA just waxed the world's fourth-largest army in nothing flat. In their opinion, the best way to keep our global leadership is to dispel the stench of decline. Things are safe for now, so they would take advantage and preserve those capabilities the United States needs most for building the military of the future. They are especially proud of U.S. technological prowess and do not want to lose it. The Cold Worriers' mantras are dual-use, industrial base, and competitiveness. Connections to Strategy and Force Structure Those are the highfalutin' national security concepts, but how do they translate into military strategy and force structure? The Transitioneers favor the beat-cop or community-policing analogy: the United States must be out there deterring crime and promoting peace. Otherwise we get called in later to clean up the mess, usually at higher cost. Platform numbers count more than sophisticated weapons, since we need large numbers to cover the world on a regular basis. The Navy and Marine Corps are featured players in this posture. The Big Sticks like the SWAT-team analogy: the United States gets called out only for the really nasty jobs that local authorities cannot handle. Warfighting and readiness are crucial, meaning we keep our edge in people and technology. The Air Force and Army are heavy hitters in this military, although naval forces may set the stage by arriving first and can contribute to the big effort as well from a different direction. The Cold Worriers employ the analogy of the Lone Ranger armed with small, high-tech, silver-bullet forces. Keys include reserves, prototypes, limited production runs, and breakthrough technologies. The domestic side of defense spending plays heavily through jobs and spin-off technologies. The winners here include advanced platforms such as the V-22 tiltrotor aircraft, the Seawolf (SSN-21) submarine or its successor, the AX bomber, and any missile-defense system. All three camps stress the unique U.S. capacity—and thus responsibility—for global leadership, especially in the security sphere. But the Gulf War experience, the new domestic atmosphere, and constrained federal budgets all conspire to force our political leaders to set priorities. It seems clear the United States cannot afford all three defense visions, nor does it make sense to assign one vision to each of the services. Hard choices will have to be made within each service, however, if they hope to keep pace with the public's still-evolving definitions of U.S. national security, not to mention surviving the likely budgetary bloodbath beginning in fiscal year 1994. Looking at the Navy and Marine Corps So how does the Department of the Navy play in these different visions, with their competing goals? One thing is clear: naval forces cannot go their separate ways anymore. They have been strongly admonished to join the nation. The Goldwater-Nichols Act, the riots in Los Angeles, and the Tailhook scandal all say that they have to be sensitive to U.S. culture and economy, and to work closely with their fellow services, the new administration, and Congress. Any other approach is just asking for trouble. With the collapse of the Soviet threat, many defense experts foresaw a decidedly maritime slant to U.S. force posture—no matter what the budgetary outcome—since most of our overseas forces were being pulled home and even disbanded. By default, the Navy and Marine Corps would be the forces left out there to perform the great bulk of day-to-day security tasks. But as time passes, the United States still maintains sizable forces in Europe, Korea, and Japan, so it is not yet clear which are the prime forward forces. More evidence came during Desert Shield and Desert Storm, when the Navy and Marine Corps seemed disappointed that they were not asked to run the show all by themselves. The truth was that the United States could readily defeat a regional power like Iraq only by applying overwhelming force, that is, by using a very large portion of its military assets. Most telling of all, however, is the emerging reality that most of the messy situations cropping up in the Cold War's wake (Yugoslavia, Somalia, the Kurds, etc.) are conflicts internal to states, where the adversaries rarely pay much heed to naval forces steaming on the horizon, however menacing. Since the Cold War's end, senior Navy leaders, as well as the surface community, have tended to favor the Transitioneer argument, because concepts such as presence, access, and influence pervade it and because it requires large numbers of platforms. They see naval forces as the only forces truly deployed forward—the glue of the Mediterranean and the Pacific. The tendency here is to believe the Navy can almost single-handedly assure the transition to a more peaceful world where commerce flows freely. After all, the United States is a maritime nation that communicates with the world only across the seas. But as Desert Storm reminded the Navy and Marine Corps, the Big Sticks have the upper hand now, and the name of the game is overwhelming force applied in joint fashion both over land and from the sea. Desert Storm shifted the focus from numbers of platforms for open-ocean warfare to what you do with those platforms in littoral warfare to influence events ashore directly. The naval contribution can still be quite substantial, as Desert Storm showed, even if naval forces cannot do the whole job themselves. Within the naval communities, the Marines are most drawn to the Big Sticks' approach because of its emphasis on projecting power ashore, something that should force more blue-green integration (i.e., more blue support for green operations). For now, this debate between the Transitioneers and Big Sticks has left the guardians of the U.S. military's finest technological achievement—nuclear-powered submarines—out in the cold. Subs were not a very convincing presence during the Persian Gulf crisis, and they could not deliver as many Tomahawks as surface ships could during Desert Storm. But they have emerged as the premier U.S. nuclear-deterrent force, which is warm comfort for the Cold Worriers. The submarine community also found surprise congressional allies who rose to defend the two or three Seawolf submarines under construction out of concern for the jobs (and votes) it represents for the country's economic (and their own political) future. Given their common fears about the industrial base, the Cold Worriers and the Navy could be natural allies in preserving and advancing technology for an unknown and possibly adverse future. Finally, the much-troubled naval aviation community seems to be split between the medium- and long-term visions. Some aviators like the Big Sticks' emphasis on air power, but they fear the focus on jointness will diminish the role for carrier air. Others prefer theCold Worriers' push for silver bullets, of which the AX would certainly be one, but worry that the new domestic focus will deprive the Navy of the large funds it needs to keep all those carriers stocked with such costly aircraft. It is probably unreasonable to expect the Navy to be any closer to the consensus about the future of U.S. defense vision than either the government or the public. But while the Navy Department has expended much energy developing a new internal vision over recent months, the long-postponed budgetary debate over the post-Cold War U.S. defense posture has finally arrived. One hopes that reorganization and the White Paper " . . . From the Sea" will help the Navy join the fray, because the Base Force has clearly reached the end of its life span. The Choices Ahead We return to the basic point: these visions, taken together, are unaffordable. Choices and compromises are inevitable, especially within the Department of the Navy. Naval forces will probably find the broadest range of satisfaction if they cast their lot with the Big Sticks, rejoining the nation by becoming truly joint team players, as the White Paper has declared. They also can retain their first-class status as warfighters by maintaining their power-projection capabilities. If the touch choices are made on procurement (and they will be unpleasant), naval forces also should be able to improve their technology by preserving a reasonably good share of their current investment budget. The submariners have the greatest problem, but Congress is apparently not inclined to dismantle their technological base. So that capability may yet survive as we grope toward a better future. Even under the most dire budgetary predictions, the United States will still have a Navy second to none, even with substantial reductions in platform numbers. This still sizable force will deploy freely around the world, maintaining its knowledge of the sea and coastal environments and staying in contact with the navies of other nations. Our sailors will not be deprived of their chance to see the world. And they will enjoy more harmonious relations with the other services and U.S. political leadership. But maintaining the best balance among ships, aircraft, modernization, readiness, and deployments will be tricky within the inevitably lower budget levels. The Department of the Navy will be able to manage such a feat only if it continues to regroup the various naval communities and plays the Washington game wholeheartedly. Dr. Gaffney is Director of Concepts Development at the Center for Naval Analyses.  He was Director of Plans for the Defense Security Assistance Agency from 1981 to 1990.  Dr. Gaffney holds a Ph.D. in Government from Columbia University and served in the U.S. Navy from 1956 to 1959. Dr. Barnett serves on the Research Staff of the Center for Naval Analyses. He is the author ofRomanian and East German Policies in the Third World: Comparing the Strategies of Ceausescu and Honecker (New York: Praeger, 1992), and has written for both The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor.  Dr. Barnett holds a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University.