Strategy in the 21st Century

[Bill Moore]

The Reagan National Defense Forum has been annual event for the past few years where several leaders in national security come to share their ideas. This year NSA McMasters provided an overview of the tenants of President Trump's emerging National Security Strategy (NSS), which is anticipated to be signed and published within the new few weeks.

The following article captures some of the key points that LTG McMasters shared with the audience.

https://www.defense.gov/News/Article...rity-strategy/

National Security Advisor Hints at Basis of Trump’s National Security Strategy

He drew an interesting parallel to President Reagan vision of renewing America's confidence to address our national malaise after the Vietnam War, and subsequent retreat from the world stage under President Carter (my view). McMaster asserts the Trump administration will do the same, and the NSS will enable this moral factors recovery.

Confidence in the United States and the nation’s influence abroad were at a low point, McMaster said. “The Soviet Union appeared to be on the rise and America, it seemed, was in decline,” he said. “President Reagan ushered in a dramatic rethinking of America’s role in the world and a dramatic renewal of American confidence. America would not only triumph in the Cold War and beyond but reach a new height of influence and prosperity.”

It was also fitting to discuss the Trump administration’s national security strategy, which will be released shortly, since Reagan signed the first national security strategy in 1987, the general said.

The key threats identified in McMaster's speech were the existing 4+1 (China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Violent Extremists), and he emphasized that North Korea was the most immediate threat to U.S. interests.

As during Reagan's time, McMaster emphasized the need to dramatically rethink national security based on these threats and our core interests.

He identified the four core national interests as:

1. Defending the homeland (traditionally this includes U.S. citizens overseas and our allies, not sure if that will be the case in this NSS)
2. Prosperity (you can't be a superpower without super economy, he emphasized fair trade)
3. Preserving peace through strength (ensuring a rules based international order, it is also worth noting we can't sustain economic growth without a rules based international order.)
4. Increasing U.S. influence (discussed the importance of our values, but not imposing our way of life upon others).

I like that he addressed the importance of understanding the dynamic and competitive nature of the security environment. He also noted that with competition comes interaction and change, so we must be prepared to change. That tells me we need to shed some our legacy views of the world.

This introduction to the draft NSS leaves many questions, and it appears it will continue to cling to the key tenants of previous NSSs, but pursue our aims more aggressively than President Obama's approach, but not as idealistically based as the Bush administration. In short, we'll regain our confidence to the shape the world, and in so doing, our allies and partners will be assured that we intend to protect our core interests (which more often than not are shared interests with our allies).

It still begs the question how we can afford this? Even in the unlikely event the proposed tax cuts generate more tax income for the government due to greater productivity of the U.S. economy we still have a massive and growing national debt. We are still facing a government shut down this month if Congress doesn't pass a budget or a continuing resolution. DoD is challenged to address force modernization due to budget uncertainty. The military requires a significant increase in its budget to rebuild its force, and simultaneously it will have to sustain it global war on violent extremists. How we continue to wage this war and how we modernize the force both need to be relooked if we're going to arrive at feasible solution for resourcing the NSS.

The rebuilding of the defense force can't simply consist of repairing broken legacy equipment (tanks, plans, helicopters, vehicles, etc.). Instead, DoD must build a 21st century force that can defend our interests from 21st Century threats. These threats range from cyber, WMD, and advanced weapons systems that may neutralize many of our current capabilities. Does more ships for the Navy matter if our adversary increasingly has the means to put them at the bottom of the ocean? Can a J35 defend us against an UAV swarm? Do we really have the means and policies to protect ourselves from sophisticated cyber attacks against our infrastructure? A cyber expert earlier in this thread points out we don't.

Developing what we hope will be a feasible strategy is extremely difficult, and implementing it will be harder. Rice bowls will need to be broken, bureaucratic processes re-wickered, the budget must be aligned to support the strategic means, and many people in key positions who can't adapt to the new strategy will need to be sidelined.

[slapout9]

I Think #4 is questionable. That needs to be refined or eliminated. Spot on As far as we need To Redesign our National Weapon Systems based upon today's threats.

[Bill Moore]

I Think #4 is questionable. That needs to be refined or eliminated. Spot on As far as we need To Redesign our National Weapon Systems based upon today's threats.

Slapout,

You have a lot of company in this belief, but I think it is essential. I'll debate it with you later, but food for thought now. We have allies and partners, which shapes the balance of power to shape the international order because most nations and most people in the world generally agree with our values (not all of our values, but broadly speaking). Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea do not have allies, because they all pursue self interests at the expense of others. If we fall into that camp, we'll find our effort to increase our prosperity and security much more challenging, if not impossible. Furthermore, our values define who we are as a nation, as a people, it provides us the necessary moral factors to sustain the fight. We can differ on this view, but I don't see how we could increase our influence without them?

[Azor]

Thanks for the posting, Bill.

Here are my thoughts…

McMaster:

The Soviet Union appeared to be on the rise and America, it seemed, was in decline…President Reagan ushered in a dramatic rethinking of America’s role in the world and a dramatic renewal of American confidence. America would not only triumph in the Cold War and beyond but reach a new height of influence and prosperity.

The operative term here is: “appeared”. This perception was not shared in the Soviet Union, which became concerned by the late 1970s that the “correlation of forces” were advantaging the United States and disadvantaging them. Reagan certainly accelerated improvements in U.S. conventional capabilities that had begun under Carter, but overall he was the beneficiary of events beyond his control, in sharp contrast to Carter. The “dramatic renewal of confidence” that McMaster refers to was domestic, and did not have any bearing on the Soviet Union’s decline and eventual collapse. We cannot mistake popular or lay American perceptions with geopolitical reality. In fact, under Carter, the U.S. was far more confident in confronting the Soviet Union than it had been under Nixon and Ford.

McMaster:

We would no longer confuse activity with progress [in South Asia]…Our military efforts and operations in the region combined with the efforts of our partners would focus on what brought us to Afghanistan in 2001 -- to deny terrorists safe havens that they could use to threaten America and threaten our allies.

Yet this trend had begun during Obama’s tenure, during which comprehensive state construction and a permanent presence were jettisoned for containment and attrition.

The most intriguing part of McMaster’s discussion was his focus on “fair” economic competition. Although it is true that the U.S. has permitted certain allies and partners to hold unfair trading advantages, the fact is that only American advances in innovation and productivity will enable the U.S. to expand its share of total world trade. Moreover, as Adam Smith noted, if countries use subsidies and tariffs to grow and protect their own industries, this only saps those countries’ national wealth by imposing costs on consumers. What the U.S. truly requires is greater public investment in R&D (military and civilian), K-12 education, STEM higher education, and infrastructure (including telecommunications such as Wi-Fi).

Having said this, the U.S. effectively leads the OECD in terms of gross and net national income, and has a very high share of GDP devoted to R&D (2.8%). Although Chinese industrial espionage is a persistent problem, China’s share of R&D has expanded from 0.73% of GDP in 1991 to 2.10% in 2015, meaning that the Chinese are using their own resources to fuel innovation and productivity (Source: OECD). I would like to see Federal R&D spending rise to above 1.20% of GDP to late 1970s/early 1980s levels (https://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/RDGDP;.jpg).

CORRECTION: in terms of R&D spending as a share of GDP PPP, Israel is 1st, the U.S. is 11th (still the largest spender in absolute terms), and China is 17th (2nd-largest absolute spender).

Bill Moore:

It still begs the question how we can afford this?

The American want public goods and services, but do not want to pay for them. It is that simple. All Reagan did was borrow instead of raising taxes.