Should the U.S. Army take on Asia? That’s what Andrew Krepinevich argued recently at RealClearDefense. He suggests that the U.S. Army can contribute to greater combat capability in the Western Pacific through the addition of mobile artillery and missile units throughout the Philippine archipelago. While perhaps appealing along operational and tactical lines, such a deployment is a poor strategic choice for both the United States and its Army.
One need only examine the experience of the U.S. Army Coast Artillery sites in the Philippines in World War II and events from the First Gulf War to determine that this is an unsound course of action. In the Philippines, U.S. coastal artillery emplacements were robust, but their supporting infrastructure was not. Loss of air and sea control around the islands prevented resupply. Army coastal defense fought valiantly, but were cut off from re-supply and forced to surrender. Modern, mobile missile and gun artillery weapons might fare better for a short time, but ground forces scattered around the Philippine archipelago will be as hard to re-supply, and as likely to be cut off from logistical support and forced to capitulate, as were their 1941-era counterparts. The “Great SCUD missile hunt” of 1991 showed that mobile, land-based missiles would avoid destruction, but those Iraqi units operated in a much larger, more geographically favorable environment. Island-based missile forces operate in much smaller “kill boxes,” have little area to reposition or retreat, and must also rely on outside resupply efforts. Leave land-based anti-ship missile operations to friends and allies, and support them in the acquisition of such capabilities when needed.
The U.S. Army should not waste valuable personnel and equipment on such “nice to have” capabilities. The Army is expected to drop its end strength to 475,000 soldiers by the end of fiscal year 2016.These personnel and associated budget decreases demand the Army be organized around two basic missions: expeditionary, high-end combat forces such as those that slashed their way across Iraq in 1991 and 2003; and a Phase IV/counterinsurgency force designed to secure territory after a fight and restore basic services to civilian that arise in the aftermath of major combat. The United States cannot afford another conflict where it takes nearly two years to transition from an expeditionary combat army to a support stability/transition force capable of restoring self-government and security to an occupied territory, such as post-2003 Iraq.
The Army must not be allowed to ignore what it learned from the counterinsurgency effort of the last 15 years, as it did following Vietnam, and instead look to compete with the other services for missions that it is not presently trained or equipped to accomplish. The Army may not be looking to conduct another messy counterinsurgency operation, but recent events in the Levant and the Crimea suggest that the need for counterinsurgency operations will not abate in the near future. The return of a revanchist Russia equally demands the retention of well-qualified, high-end ground forces capable of advanced mechanized warfare.
At worst, a call for the U.S. Army to assume an offensive, land-based cruise missile role in the Western Pacific represents the “tyranny of jointness” in action. The re-shaping of the U.S. military as a joint force through the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 was about allowing the services to combine their capabilities with greater efficiency when needed. The legislation was not designed to enforce jointness in every operation the nation mounted. The Army’s current expertise and equipment clearly suggest that the service should concentrate its efforts in geographic locations other than the Western Pacific, where great distances and extensive waterspace dictate the predominance of air and maritime capabilities. Scattering its forces around the archipelagoes of the Western Pacific would condemn them to isolation and eventual loss while in pursuit of the worst kind of service parochialism.
Steven Wills is a retired surface warfare officer who spent most of his operational career in small combatants. He is now a PhD candidate in Military History at Ohio University. His forthcoming dissertation examines the change in U.S. Navy strategy from 1989-1994 with an emphasis on the effects of the end of the Cold War, the Goldwater Nichols Act, and the First Gulf War on that change.
Photo credit: Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class James R. Evans, U.S. Navy
Warlock 
America can never win a land war in Asia.
Look, America needs to fix itself; spending on infrastructure that is so behind the rest of the world and shrink the military 60% or so.
Otherwise, America will lose its dollar reserve status and lose their superpower hegemony.
This isn’t about the tyranny of jointness. it’s about the U.S. Army seeking opportunities to avoid further reductions (no one really thought they’d take on more missions without more resources, did you? One never heard the Army bleating for a greater role for the Navy or the Air Force when the “main show” was supposed to be in Europe.
During the Cold War the U.S., whether or not it publicly admitted, recognized that a nuclear armed nation as powerful as the Soviet Union had a geographic “Sphere of Influence” within which they were the dominating political, economic, and military power.
It’s simply common sense for us to realize that same situation holds true for (in this instance) China. Having shaken off the imperialistic domination of Western Powers they are reasserting their strategic dominance over Asia. The U.S. is neither comparatively powerful enough nor should it be stupid to once again get involved in a conflict in Asia. This country needs to wake up and admit the age of Western domination over the remainder of the world is over. We have no national interest in Asia which needs defending at the cost of what will surely be a losing conflict (on our part) fought 7,000 +/- miles from our shores.
In addition the U.S. should recognize that it will not be in our national interest to militarily intervene on a long term basis anywhere in this world. We are foolishly going down that slippery slope in Iraq at the current time. — and quicksand awaits at the bottom of that slope.
The model for a cost effective and successful intervention was in fact the First Gulf War — in which our strategic interest was to keep Iraq from controlling a forcibly obtained major portion of the world’s then known oil reserve. We went in applying force and then withdrew leaving the governments and militaries of all the Nations involved intact — just as Sun Tzu recommends. And, the other nations such as the Saudis which benefited from our intervention paid most of it’s cost.
It was not then in 1991, nor in 2003, in this country’s national interest to create the political disruption that would occur from prevening the Iraqi Army in 1991 from suppressing the then revolt by the Shirts to have continued. We should have learned that lesson from the strategic failure that we have incurred as a result of our 2003 intervention and subsequent occupation of that kind.
The lesson of our involvement in Vietnam and in 2003+ Iraq is that we should not have went into those lands — we must not get involved in any additional / future long term assistance efforts or in any other long term interventions in and occupations of foreign lands — especially in Asia or Asia Minor.
That is the lesson from our strategic failures in Vietnam, Iraq 2093+, Afghanistan, and elsewhere emanating from our costly interventions or costly assistance programs. The lesson is not that the Army needs to learn how in the future to once again be involved in another strategic failure and fail in some supposedly better manner.
Again, the strategic and operational model for successful interventions is the First Gulf War, otherwise stay out of some local squabble — or we will find ourselves again involved in some failed protracted foreign war.