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COPYRIGHT 2001 JAI Press, Inc.
In 1919, flush with victory in World War I but bled white from the fighting, Britain's government announced a "ten-year rule" in its defense planning, premised on the expectation that the country would face neither a major conflict nor the need for a large overseas deployment for at least a decade. [1] That decision freed Britain to slice defense expenditures and maintain only a skeletal defense force, an adequate navy, and some capability for colonial policing. The rule remained in effect until late 1932, shortly before Hitler's appointment as German chancellor. Seven years later, Britain was at war, and within eight was fighting for its life against the German Luftwaffe.
Since that time, enthusiasm in the United States for a similar rule has been tepid at best. During the Cold War, it would have been out of the question, but a decade after the conclusion of that competition the idea remains anathema to American military and strategic planners. Readiness is the mantra of the armed services and the touchstone of presidential politics on military issues. Few people, however, have stopped to ask whether the enemies that the U.S. military is now ready to face resemble the likely enemies of the future. The simple answer is that they may not.
The United States has now achieved a level of military dominance unmatched since the Mongols in their heyday (and enjoys far more goodwill beyond its borders than Genghis Khan's hordes ever did). The country's national security standing has little room to improve, and in the short term there is little likelihood of a sharp decline. Such regional bullies as now exist are no match for the United States should it ever decide to bring its full might to bear. Ten to fifteen years hence, however, the conditions favoring the United States will have probably deteriorated sharply. Unless one believes that the world's most powerful nations will coexist happily ever after, the United States must anticipate the return of contentiousness and competition among them, along with the potential that large parts of the world will oppose the spread of American values, influence, and power.
An explicit ten-year rule would tell the defense bureaucracy to plan to meet foes that are both larger and more sophisticated than today's. To be in a position to do so, the United States needs to transform itself in potentially uncomfortable ways, even at the cost of slightly increasing its exposure to risks in the immediate future. The alternative is to assume that current preparations for war will suffice for the future, and that the problems and mores of today's quick wars (including a high aversion to taking, and even inflicting, casualties) will endure.
The United States can succeed where Britain failed because of the indisputable multidimensional dominance of the U.S. economic and technological base--and hence its military. [2] Britain in 1920 faced any number of countries capable of raising military forces comparable to its own. But Britain counted the United States as a firm ally or at least friendly neutral, and discounted any danger from France (since it would probably remain friendly), Germany (hopefully friendly), the Soviet Union (clearly unfriendly, but chaotic), or Japan (a recent ally). Significantly, however, all but France had the potential to pull ahead of Britain economically. This fact made it impossible to justify a ten-year rule except on the assumption that those countries that could raise comparable militaries would choose not to, or would at least build up slowly enough to permit Britain to keep pace. By contrast, the United States is currently without an economic, technological, or military equal. Today, only Europe, and only by acting in concert, has the requisite financial strength to develop such a military, but it lacks the technology, the youth cohort, and any plausible motivation for armed hostility against U.S. interests. Japan's population, only half as large as America's, is aging more rapidly and shows little eagerness for war. Russia is a basket case economically, demographically, and spiritually. China and India are rising powers, but at least ten to fifteen years away from having economic might comparable to that of the United States. The United States can thus assure itself of military dominance over that time period by measuring not the intentions, but only the actual capabilities of others.
The Tyranny of the Present
The U.S. Department of Defense is well aware of the need to prepare for the future. The Joint Staff has published doctrines on the subject; expenditures for new programs and other research and development (R&D) continue apace; and some of the future environments in which war is contemplated are figuratively and literally out of this world. [3]
Military spending as a whole, however, tells a different story. The sharp-edged fiscal constraints imposed after the Cold War's end forced the military to demonstrate its utility in the immediate term rather than with preparations for distant and seemingly unlikely contingencies. Thus, the army emphasizes the acquisition of weapons that would have put its soldiers rapidly into the field against Serbs, rather than those that would enable them to emerge intact from a fight against heavily armed opponents. The navy talks of pushing operations toward the enemy littoral despite the proliferation of land-based antiship weapons that can be easily hidden. Similarly, the air force puts a higher percentage of its bomb-dropping capability in short-range fighters rather than long-range bombers despite the profusion...
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