The Inter-Service Wars Are Looking Like Calvinball
It would be foolish to make force planning decisions based on an alternate reality, in which policymakers wisely limit American objectives. The inter-service struggle for resources is not a zero-sum game.
In an iconic installment of “Calvin & Hobbes,” the beloved comic strip by Bill Watterson, little Calvin and his stuffed tiger Hobbes are playing baseball. Calvin gets a hit and rounds the bases to home, but Hobbes cries foul. “You didn’t touch all the bases!” he tells Calvin. Calvin protests and Hobbes retorts, “You didn’t touch seventh base.” They then debate what all the bases are, revealing there are at least 23 bases in addition to — as Hobbes reveals — a “secret base.” Calvin asks where it is and Hobbes tells him he can’t say. It is a secret, after all. A confounded Calvin grouses, “I can’t believe this moronic sport is our national pastime.”
This is how I often feel as I watch the inter-service wars — increasingly the national pastime of the U.S. military.
In their recent essay at War on the Rocks, “Airpower May Not Win Wars, But It Sure Doesn’t Lose Them,” two senior Air Force pilots, Mike Pietrucha and Jeremy Renken, argue that the United States has departed from “the successful post-Vietnam template that relied on airpower to seek limited objectives” in favor of a “ground-centric approach” that “failed to achieve stated goals” in Afghanistan and Iraq. Few national security analysts would disagree with their assessment of the efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the key words of their thesis are “limited objectives” and “stated goals,” not “airpower” or “ground-centric.”
The United States should stop fighting unwinnable wars, whether by land, sea, or air. Alas, given that its political leadership has repeatedly ignored that advice, it would be foolish to make force planning decisions based on a fantasy alternate reality. As a wise man once noted, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
It’s true that airpower was the primary U.S. and NATO contribution to the successes in Bosnia (Deliberate Force, 1995) and Kosovo (Allied Force, 1999). But the victories in Grenada (Urgent Fury, 1983) and Panama (Just Cause, 1989) were predominantly ground combat operations. What these victories had in common was very limited strategic goals that were amenable to quick resolution by military force.
Having served as an Army field artillery officer in Desert Storm, I’d like to think ground forces helped win that war. But, certainly, the massive aerial campaign that went first was the main effort. (And doubtless saved the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of us ground pounders.) Regardless, we won a decisive and relatively quick victory mostly because our aims were exceedingly narrow: force Saddam Hussein to withdraw his forces from Kuwait.
A dozen years later, our successors accomplished a much more challenging mission — invading the heart of Iraq and toppling Saddam’s regime — in half the time with a quarter of the forces and half the casualties of Operation Desert Storm. The failure was in achieving the nebulous, arguably unachievable, follow-on objective that post-Saddam Iraq would “set an example to all the Middle East of a vital and peaceful and self-governing nation.” To the extent that goal — for which some 4,400 Americans died in vain trying to achieve — was attainable through U.S. military action, it was going to be facilitated by ground forces. But it wasn’t going to happen in an acceptable timeframe, without a massive mobilization of forces, or otherwise fit within the political constraints rightly imposed by a democratic society on war aims so tangential to the national interest.
But let’s not forget that, in the intervening period, a series of aerial operations (Southern Watch from 1991 to 2003, Northern Watch from 1997 to 2003, Desert Strike in 1996, and Desert Fox in 1998) failed to achieve much less ambitious aims in Iraq. Saddam continued to repress the civilian population, conduct air operations, and thumb his nose at UN nuclear inspectors throughout the period, and attempted to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush to boot.
For that matter, while Pietrucha and Renken are right when they note that “the ground-centric military paradigm undertaken in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom was strategically questionable, costly, and did not prevent the emergence of strengthened radical Islamist movements,” the same could be said of more than a decade of air strikes not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in places such as Pakistan and Yemen. And, while I wholeheartedly share President Barack Obama’s reluctance to deploy significant American ground forces against the Islamic State, it’s worth noting that a year of a rather heavy “air-centric military paradigm” hasn’t exactly been a rousing success, contrary to what Pietrucha and Renken argue.
The authors argue that landpower was unsuccessful in Vietnam because it could only be applied “at extreme cost in blood, treasure and popular support.” But it’s not as if the Air Force or naval aviation sat that war out. A massive, years-long bombing campaign did nothing to further our strategic aims. As noted by Dennis M. Drew, a retired Air Force colonel and long-time member of the Air University faculty, Operation Rolling Thunder, “the longest sustained aerial bombing campaign in history,” spectacularly failed to achieve the objectives set forth at the outset: “to persuade the North Vietnamese to quit the war, or failing that, to entice them to the negotiating table to arrange a compromise settlement of the problems in Southeast Asia.” Follow-on missions, notably Operations Linebacker I and Linebacker II, were more tactically successful but nonetheless not strategically decisive. As with the ground war, military superiority over the enemy couldn’t overcome the unachievable political objectives and the concomitant constraints on the use of force.
Pietrucha and Renken rightly note that the dropping of two atomic bombs was the decisive blow in the Pacific theater in World War II and claim this “settled that airpower could end wars.” But our political leadership wisely rejected the idea of using atomic weapons in Korea and Vietnam and never seriously considered using them in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our strategic aims seldom rise to the level at which the nuclear option is viable. At the same time, they repeatedly rise to the level at which our democratically elected leaders deem war necessary.
In fairness, Pietrucha and Renken fully admit that airpower has its limitations. But they judge it by different standards than they do ground combat. They seem to dismiss the failure of aerial warfare to achieve our stated political aims as a feature — “reversibility that preserve[s] options for decision-makers” — rather than a bug. Meanwhile, “landpower proved insufficient to meet the challenges” and “produced costly failures that we should not be eager to repeat” even in wars in which a massive application of airpower was employed in conjunction with the ground campaign. Airpower can win but never lose only if we’re playing Hobbes’ version of baseball or, even better, Calvinball — the game invented by Calvin in which the players may declare new rules at any point in the game.
Naturally, all of this is about a budget fight. The authors contend that “both the Air Force and Navy are struggling to make up for chronic neglect brought on by a focus on land campaigns” and suggest that budget resources should be allocated more generously to the U.S. Air Force and Navy rather than to the Army.
First off, while it’s certainly true that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were exceedingly costly in terms of American blood and treasure, it’s hard to argue with a straight face that it has resulted in “neglect” for the Air Force and Navy. We have, after all, famously continued to pour billions into the F-35 boondoggle which costs more than the entire GDP of Australia, enough to buy every homeless person in America a mansion, or whatever other cutesy comparison you’d like to make for a trillion-dollar airplane. Meanwhile, the Navy is getting ready to field the first Ford-class aircraft carrier at just under $13 billion a copy, with two more on the way.
Second, the Obama administration is already doing precisely what they recommend. The Army and Marine Corps, which bore the brunt of the last fourteen years of fighting, are being drastically downsized. The Army is shrinking from a wartime high of 570,000 to 450,000 and could fall as low as 420,000 if sequestration remains in place. (This, as the talking point goes, is smaller than it’s been since before WWII. That’s technically if only barely true, but largely meaningless in terms of combat power.) The Marine Corps drops from a wartime high of 204,000 to 182,000, or 175,000 under sequestration. Meanwhile, the main austerity inflicted on the Air Force is doing away with the A-10, whose sole mission is to support the Army, while the Navy is having to do with fewer Littoral Combat Ships used to support Marines. Indeed, while the Army budget plummets from a wartime high of $287.2 billion to $126.5 billion in FY2016 constant dollars, the Air Force only drops from $183.8 billion to $152.9 billion. The Navy takes a modest haircut, going from $194.4 billion to $161.2 billion — much of which comes out of the hide of the Marine Corps.
Given limited resources, a rising China, a resurgent Russia, and a weariness around counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations, that’s arguably a sound policy. If, as Pietrucha and Renken suggest, we can simply rely on being “isolated by two great oceans,” accept “limited objectives,” and stop expecting “decisive conclusion[s]” to our disputes with other countries, it’s certainly the right call.
Yet history shows that this can never remain American policy for long. We are, as the historian Geoffrey Perret dubbed us more than a quarter century ago, “A Country Made by War.” Indeed, we’ve fought an awful lot of them since. While even sequestration-sized Army and Marine Corps would be more than adequate for any deterrent mission plus various special operations, humanitarian relief missions, and other small deployments, they’d be woefully inadequate for a re-run of the last decade.
While the obvious solution is the one stated at the outset — avoid such a re-run — a global superpower never runs out of challenges to its perceived interests. Recall that the man who led us into Iraq campaigned on a “humble foreign policy” that eschewed “nation-building.”
James Joyner, a former Army officer and combat veteran, is an associate professor of strategic studies at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College and the publisher of OutsideTheBeltway.com. These views are his own.
Searching 
mannning 
TomG 
Tom 
kilroywashere 
James B. 
Thomas Quiggin 
Ahh, a ground-pounder suggests that the better alternative to the rebalancing effort identified in the awful article about airpower should be status quo. How predictable.
Truth is that there really isn’t a real battle going on between the services…at least not the kind that we experienced in the 50’s and 60’s. In the post Goldwater-Nichols environment the well-embedded advocacies in DoD and Congress will ensure that the “fair share” fiscal distribution methodology continues. If sequestration kicks back in at the end of September there may be some more friction, but the truth is that the majority of the discussion that is taking place is on-line in forums like WOTR.
As an aside, without a clear existential threat to the US there is no need for executive branch policy makers to actually think hard about the application of military force. As a result we will continue to chase insurgents/terrorists/scary bad guys at great cost in treasure and occasional cost in blood. What these same policy makers are missing is that this chase is a symptom of systematic change in the global balance of power. It may actually be a good time to sit back and observe for a while before we walk right into an l-shaped ambush.
Regarding VIETNAM, as I remember it, the high command of the Vietnam forces was just about ready to throw in the towel, when our people went for a negotiated peace. They bragged that they had won on the basis of defeating us politically in the streets of the US.
Is this not true?
“…..the high command of the Vietnam forces was just about ready to throw in the towel.”
Which Vietnamese forces would those be?
ARVN!
We deployed millions of troops, several fleets, and thousands of aircraft. We dropped more ordnance on that godforsaken country then we dropped on the Third Reich. Our mission wasn’t to conquer North Vietnam, since the Soviets would have continued to escalate the war, but to form a functioning South Vietnamese government, at which we failed. As soon as we stopped supporting them, all the billions in hardware and training was useless against a numerically inferior foe. Sound familiar to recent events?
I’m concerned that the author’s thesis is based upon a number of historically questionable premises.
1) “The United States should stop fighting unwinnable wars, whether by land, sea, or air.” The idea that American campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq constituted “unwinnable wars” remains a hotly debated subject. I would argue, and I suspect that I’m not alone in doing so, that both campaigns were “winnable”, but that operational methodologies and strategic consolidation were lacking for a number of reasons. As one of America’s greatest strengths is the belief that nothing is impossible, labeling something as impossible or “unwinnable” when it’s been botched runs contrary to the American way of learning from past mistakes in order to succeed in the future.
2) “It’s true that airpower was the primary U.S. and NATO contribution to the successes in Bosnia (Deliberate Force, 1995) and Kosovo (Allied Force, 1999). But the victories in Grenada (Urgent Fury, 1983) and Panama (Just Cause, 1989) were predominantly ground combat operations. What these victories had in common was very limited strategic goals that were amenable to quick resolution by military force.” That airpower was the primary U.S./NATO contribution to Bosnia and Kosovo is questionable. In fact, it has been suggested that those operations were only successful after lengthy, inconclusive air campaigns resulted in the increasing likelihood of intervention by ground forces. I also question the wisdom of trying to gauge such matters on a grand strategic scale by focusing so heavily on such granular models as these conflicts represent.
3) “Having served as an Army field artillery officer in Desert Storm, I’d like to think ground forces helped win that war. But, certainly, the massive aerial campaign that went first was the main effort. (And doubtless saved the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of us ground pounders.) Regardless, we won a decisive and relatively quick victory mostly because our aims were exceedingly narrow: force Saddam Hussein to withdraw his forces from Kuwait.” The author proliferates two dangerous fallacies in this paragraph. First, the ground campaign was the main effort; the air campaign certainly facilitated operational success for ground forces, but that air campaign’s success has been vastly overstated since 1991, and the role ground forces played in consolidating those airpower gains understated accordingly. Second, Desert Storm’s alleged “decisiveness” is undermined by the fact that Iraq remained a threat to regional stability, as evidenced by multiple rounds of failed inspections, continued Iraqi efforts to circumvent sanctions, two subsequent military operations that received at least initial support from the American populace, and the prolonged need for an American presence to contain the Hussein regime. This final aspect led to the metastasis of al Qaeda and other Islamist groups, which is almost universally overlooked by both critics of the Iraq War’s justification, and claimants of Desert Storm’s “decisiveness”.
4) “To the extent that goal — for which some 4,400 Americans died in vain trying to achieve — was attainable through U.S. military action, it was going to be facilitated by ground forces. But it wasn’t going to happen in an acceptable timeframe, without a massive mobilization of forces, or otherwise fit within the political constraints rightly imposed by a democratic society on war aims so tangential to the national interest.” If the Marine Corps, which had largely maintained its doctrinal background in small wars, had been allowed to lead the effort, it might have. Instead, the Iraq War was spearheaded by the Army, which conducted an institutional purge of its counterinsurgency knowledge base after 1973, and the Air Force, which was fixated upon RMA, Rapid Decisive Operations, and “Shock and Awe”. To a great degree, the ongoing problems in Iraq can be chalked up to poor leadership by senior officers, and conversely, poor quality advice to America’s political leaders.
5) “For that matter, while Pietrucha and Renken are right when they note that ‘the ground-centric military paradigm undertaken in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom was strategically questionable, costly, and did not prevent the emergence of strengthened radical Islamist movements'” Pietrucha and Renken are not right to note that. The problems in Afghanistan and Iraq did not arise from the fact that they were ground-centric, and while the author goes on to note that, it should not be premised on this fallacy.
6) “Pietrucha and Renken rightly note that the dropping of two atomic bombs was the decisive blow in the Pacific theater in World War II and claim this ‘settled that airpower could end wars.'” Pietrucha and Renken do not rightly note this. The use of atomic weapons was significant, but also significant (and almost universally omitted) is the role played by the Soviet Union, which declared war on Japan around the same time as the Nagasaki bombing. Japan had hoped that the Soviet Union would remain neutral and negotiate a settlement. The atomic bombings did not prove that airpower could end wars; rather, Japan’s capitulation proved that the Clausewitzian adage that war is a function of politics is unequivocally true.
Tom,
Agreed. The atomic weapons were simply a denouement. I would submit the decisive blow in the Pacific was actually delivered by the U.S. Navy Submarine Service. By AUG 6, 1945 Japan’s capacity to wage war had been utterly devastated.
As noted on the Historic Naval Ships Association portal (http://archive.hnsa.or/doc/subsinpacific.htm) : ” Japanese Merchant Ship Losses. The Japanese cargo carrying capacity of 6 million tons at the start of the war was reduced to about 5 million tons by the end of 1943, and to less than 3 million tons by the end of 1944 despite a rigorous ship building program. At war’s end in August 1945 Japan had less than 2 million tons of cargo shipping, but only 312,000 tons of it was in condition to haul cargo. Despite ship construction of 3 1/4 million tons during the war, replacement tonnage amounted to only about a third of losses due to all causes. Because of shipping losses, Japanese imports of bulk commodities fell from about 20 million tons in 1941 to about 16 1/2 million tons at the end of 1943, and further to 10 million tons in 1944. The importation of materials had essentially ceased by the time Japan surrendered in August 1945. By then Japan’s war industry was stalled, and it was impossible for the military to wage war abroad. It was also nearly impossible for the civilian population to exist on the meager rations of food and energy available.
American submarines acted alone to destroy the Japanese ocean transport system during the first two years of the war. Thereafter, other elements of U.S. forces contributed to its destruction. However, our submarines deserve most of the credit.”
American submarines sank 55% of Japan’s merchant tonnage. 52 American submarines remain on eternal patrol.
For more see:
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87/history/pac-campaign.html
I’m not sure if your reply is a critique of the article or you were just proving his point even further. Almost all of what you pointed out was critique of the article this article was written in response to. I sense that Joyner only agreed with them out of professional courtesy, because he goes on to complete disagree the core of their arguments.
And to be fair, labeling something “unwinnable” when we botch it up, is an extremely American way of doing things. If we can’t win, it must be impossible…
In my Navy experience and research, each service has an operational niche that they fill and every war represents and opportunity to demonstrate the value of that niche. Unfortunately, wars are not one-size-fits-all commodities: some are best fought by air, some by land, some by sea, but acknowledging this reality is seen as endangering future funding. Worse, being a valuable part of a joint force team is seen as either an admission that some of your capabilities are better performed by others, or as volunteering to work for someone else in perpetuity.
Those are operational issues. We also have a severe strategic deficit at the upper flag and SES levels of government, and this gets us into either unwinnable wars, or leads us to fight them badly until we learn better. Afghanistan and Iraq were brilliantly executed in operational terms, but the strategy (or lack thereof) evinced fundamental misunderstanding of the two nations.
Blowing things up and shooting people is not an end, regardless of how well we do it, it is still only a means to a political end. I frankly don’t expect Congress and even the White House to have all the experience to make wise strategic decisions, but our current crop of service bureaucrats are too parochial to fix this.
As an aside, the budget wars have not really begun in earnest. The decline of the petrodollar, the diminution of the role of the USD as the international currency of choice, the selling of UST by China and the Saudis are all “indicators and warnings” of further economic/financial troubles. Add to that, the international central banks (Read The Fed) have essentially expended all of their ammunition in trying to re-inflate the OECD economies by using QE (money printing) and artificial long term low interest rates. When the next financial “correction” occurs, it will be far worse than 2008 and there will be less resources available to meet the challenge. For those in the defense planning world, it might be wise to ask yourself a worst case scenario: What programs will we support/cut when there is a 25 to 30% budget cut?