Thomas P.M. Barnett - Army America needs versus the wars Americans prefer to wage

[wm]

No U.S. general (or that of any other country today) would ever contemplate a full-scale invasion and occupation of China. As noted, the nuclear weapons alone make such a scenario a non-starter --- never mind the enormous geographical and population scale issues.

While the above is probably true, it is equally true that, in the 20th Century at least, the US was traditionally dragged into wars as an initially unwilling ally of other countries subjected to invasion. If we want to consider options other than the COIN-type events or small wars that are at one end of the spectrum, I suggest that the right answer is more on the lines of mid-level wars where the US intervenes after the fact to try to redress the injustice/balance of power caused by two "less than super" powers getting into a micturating contest. I submit we are more likely to get involved in a conventional war along the lines of DS/DS rather than a heavyweight slugfest like what was envisioned in our war planning for post WWII European conflicts.

Some possible scenarios--
--Assistance to RoK or Japan in NEA should a regime change occur with the death of Kim Jong Il and a muscle flexing by his successor or an invasion by the Chinese to establish his successor.
--A range possible actions in any of the less stable South or Central American countries--our response should, for example, Colombia decide it wants to supplement its cocaine income with oil income from Venezuela or Peru decide it wants to reestablish the Incan Empire by conquering Bolivia and/or Ecuador.
--A host of various alternatives in Africa, ranging from humanitarian interventions to stop brutal suppression of tribal seccessions (Nigeria vs. Biafra Round II, circa 2010) to overt grabs for resources (and these could be as simple as more water and arable land) among various African countries in the sub-Saharan regions. We are already avoiding the Darfur regional problem, dabbling in the Somilia problem again, and might have others (like Robert Mugabe's experiment as a national leader) to attract our attention sooner rather than later.

There should be plenty to entertain our military futurists and we need to have a range of force options not an "either/or" military that hopes it has gotten the "crystal-balling" right.

[RTK]

Some possible scenarios--
--Assistance to RoK or Japan in NEA should a regime change occur with the death of Kim Jong Il and a muscle flexing by his successor or an invasion by the Chinese to establish his successor.

I'm not convinced Japan and RoK would be on the same page in that scenario.

[wm]

I'm not convinced Japan and RoK would be on the same page in that scenario.

And were that the case, what would the US do? Would we feel compelled to act in a conflict between the islands and the peninsula? Which side would we support, if either?

We could probably conduct conventional maneuver warfare across the Korean Peninsula with our current force structure. But how well could we sustain it if we did not have Japan as a forward basing option?
We might be hard pressed to conduct meaningful maneuver operations on the Japanese islands. I think the problems that were foresee for WWII's Operations Downfall, Olympic, and Coronet and that were used to justify the A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would come back to haunt us rather quickly.

[LawVol]

If I was a Chinese general, why would I even attempt to fight a "big war" in such a scenario? Better to follow a Russian strategy to retreat to the vast interior, harassing an invader along the way, threatening his supply lines.

Rather than offer decisive battle somewhere, they could just start guerilla operations when the first GI steps ashore, and stick with it. If we're having this much trouble keeping a lid on Baghdad, Basra, Ramadi and the rest of these places, can you imagine what it would take for Peking, Shanghai, and the rest of Chinese coastal areas?

If waging small wars is a tool of the weak against the strong, would China really resort solely to a small war in any conflict with the US? Unless I am mistaken, China sees itself as a major power; if not completely on par with the US then at least close and working to create parity. If this is indeed the case, wouldn't a resort to an insurgent strategy present a completely different picture of China to the world?

Moreover, if this were the strategy, why Cina's increasing interest in force projection (deep water navy, 5th gen fighters, anti-satellite capability, etc.)? Is it possible that China may employ a hydrid war that blends conventional and unconventional tactics and strategy?

[Lastdingo]

Mainland China doesn't need insurgent tactics against heavy forces. It can simply resort to significant quantities of light infantry as it did in the Korean War.
Such troops would be very tough to fight in many Chinese landscapes.
Their setbacks in the 1979 punitive expedition against Vietnam told them that they need a more professional army than before.

Its attempts to gain modern, heavy weaponry and force protection/amphibious capabilities can easily be explained as regional hegemon aspirations. It's the traditional role of China to dominate its neighbours and I believe there's little that can be done about it unless you form formal alliances to counter that.

[Tacitus]

If waging small wars is a tool of the weak against the strong, would China really resort solely to a small war in any conflict with the US? Unless I am mistaken, China sees itself as a major power; if not completely on par with the US then at least close and working to create parity. If this is indeed the case, wouldn't a resort to an insurgent strategy present a completely different picture of China to the world?

Moreover, if this were the strategy, why China's increasing interest in force projection (deep water navy, 5th gen fighters, anti-satellite capability, etc.)? Is it possible that China may employ a hydrid war that blends conventional and unconventional tactics and strategy?

China has alot of options to resist any invader. A Navy to attack supply lines across an ocean, or get in the way of any Normandy style landing.

Look, I'm just saying that they could take a page out of the Russians' play book assuming somebody chose to make a landing on the mainland. They wouldn't need to mirror US forces to come out ahead in such a fight. Retreat inwards, wearing down the invader through a multi-million strong infantry army, organizing guerilla operations in the rear of the invader. Maybe they retreat to a place of their choosing and fight conventionally, as the Russians did at Borodino. Then harass the invader every step of the way back to the coast. An invader might see the whole spectrum from guerilla operations on up. It is merely an option.

Who said guerilla warfare had to be used only by a weak country against a strong one, anyway? You can make your own call on how weak the USSR was on the eve of Operation Barbarossa and afterwards. It certainly got stronger as the war went on in the east. They used a partisan army in the rear to cause trouble, in conjunction with building up large conventional forces in the front. Any Eastern Front experts out there could chime in on how many forces they tied down, but just from looking at maps in books, it seemed to have been a considerable amount that could have been used elsewhere.

But back to the topic, at hand. I have a question. Assuming Iraq is an aberration, and you are preferring instead to focus on conventional war with rising powers like China. What would that change about how the U.S. armed forces looked before we invaded Iraq? How do you plan to organize, outfit, and conduct a war with China, even if is a conventional only fight?

[LawVol]

But back to the topic, at hand. I have a question. Assuming Iraq is an aberration, and you are preferring instead to focus on conventional war with rising powers like China. What would that change about how the U.S. armed forces looked before we invaded Iraq? How do you plan to organize, outfit, and conduct a war with China, even if is a conventional only fight?

I am not advocating a focus on conventional war. I do believe that we will continue to face situations that will require COIN skills, including regime change, humanitarian efforts that go awry, etc. However, I do not think we can focus on COIN skills to the exclusion of our conventional advantage.

We have clearly mastered conventional war and I believe we can master COIN as well. However, I sense an undercurrent of doubt when it comes to preparing for a peer competitor in many things I've read. If our enemy (whomever it may be in the future) seeks to capitalize on our weakness, are we doing him a favor by overly focusing on COIN to the detriment of conventional capabilities? Rather than assuming the next war (or some future war rather than the very next one) will be like Iraq, or Korea, or WWII, couldn't it be a blend of the two? And if this scenario is realistic, should we be capable of fighting both types of war simultaneously?

Maybe this line of thinking is way off-track, but I can't help but notice that most of what I read falls into one camp or another. If I'm not making sense, my apologies.

[Xenophon]

I don't think anyone is saying that we need to focus on small wars to the absolute exclusion of conventional wars. That would be just as folly as our current void in small wars capability. But even the "Iraq is an aberration" crowd has to admit that we are lacking the small wars area and future small wars will happen. Therefore, whether the future brings more small wars or more large wars, we need to be prepared for both, as Merv Benson has pointed out in this thread.

While Barnett and Yingling are both correct, the situation is not as dire as it seems. The Marine Corps is small and adaptable enough to shift its focus to small wars and counterinsurgency and has a storied history in such conflicts, although mostly forgotten until recently. I believe the Marines can take on a greater focus in counterinsurgency without losing too much capability to conduct expeditionary warfare from the sea. In fact, the traditional expeditionary mindset and missions of the Marine Corps lend themselves to a counterinsurgency mission. The Army, meanwhile, can maintain its traditional superiority in conventional land warfare that its size, budget, and technologically-focused mindset are more suited to deal with.

[Tacitus]

I am not advocating a focus on conventional war. I do believe that we will continue to face situations that will require COIN skills, including regime change, humanitarian efforts that go awry, etc. However, I do not think we can focus on COIN skills to the exclusion of our conventional advantage.

Maybe this line of thinking is way off-track, but I can't help but notice that most of what I read falls into one camp or another. If I'm not making sense, my apologies.

I don't disagree with you, Xenophon, or anybody else around here, really. I think perhaps people are talking past each other.

I'm just a little shocked that anybody would be making an argument about treating Iraq as an aberration, whereas China is the REAL threat. China is exporting billions of dollars worth of products a year to us. Why they would perpretrate an act of war against their best customer is a question that perhaps deserves its own thread. What interest would that serve?

If I was pulling a paycheck that required me to plan the structure and training with an eye towards likely foes:
1. The vice president threatened / warned / saber rattled in the direction of Tehran from the deck of an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf last month,
2. The President of Pakistan has somehow survived serveral assassination attempts. Who the hell knows who would take over there and what their intentions are, should Musharraf's luck run out?

Preparations for the invasion of mainland China would fall somewhere down on the bottom of my list of things to do.

Both Iran and Pakistan have some conventional ability, but I bet that could be overcome. How you cope with Pakistan's nuclear capability is the elephant in the room. Occupy either one, however, and you still face a real threat of guerilla warfare.

If I may invoke a sports analogy, as it stands now, we are like a football team with a high octane passing game that can score points in a hurry. We're dealing with an opponent, however, that is playing ball control with a 3 yards and a cloud of dust offense. We can't get the ball back from these guys, and to make matters worse, we seem to have never thought to practice recovering an onsides kick. They are just running out the clock on us, while our great skill position players can't get in the game. We might have some tough road games ahead of us on this schedule, so this is cause for alarm. Unless they are just a bunch of morons (a dangerous assumption to make about any adversary), they are watching this and can be expected to attack this weakness, if their preferred strategy fails.

So what do you do? Figure out how to shore up your deficiencies? Or work to become still more explosive on offense? Every coach I ever played for wanted to deal with an exposed weakness ASAP because your opponents will want to know right away if you have corrected it, or not.

Every platoon sergeant, company and battalion commander I ever served under wanted to identify and correct any deficiencies pronto, as well. It would be tragic if this inclination can not make its way up the chain of command above the men who have to get it done in the field, for whatever bureaucratic or ideological reason. Our brave fighting men deserve an honest assessment and corrective action for any problems in doctrine, equipment or training which reveal themselves...not for them to be assumed out of the enemy's playbook because it complicates training exercises, or whatever reason was offered up after Viet Nam.

I yield the balance of my time to the next "small war Senator" to take the floor.