Small Wars Journal

Security Strategy Recognizes US Limits

Thu, 02/05/2015 - 10:52pm

Security Strategy Recognizes US Limits by Peter Baker and David E. Sanger, New York Times

President Obama plans to release his second, and final, national security strategy on Friday, laying out a blueprint for robust American leadership for his remaining time in office while recognizing limits on how much the United States can shape world events.

By issuing the strategy at a time when critics have accused him of being too reluctant to assert American power, Mr. Obama will defend his handling of crises like those in the Middle East and Ukraine. But he will argue that the urgent demands of combating the Islamic State and countering President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia need to be balanced with a focus on long-term challenges like climate change, global health and cyberattacks. “The question is never whether America should lead, but how we should lead,” Mr. Obama writes in an introduction to the document, a report that seems to mix legacy with strategy. In taking on terrorists, he argues that the United States should avoid the deployment of large ground forces like those sent more than a decade ago to Iraq and Afghanistan. In spreading democratic values, he says, America should fight corruption and reach out to young people.

“On all these fronts, America leads from a position of strength,” he writes. “But this does not mean we can or should attempt to dictate the trajectory of all unfolding events around the world. As powerful as we are and will remain, our resources and influence are not infinite. And in a complex world, many of the security problems we face do not lend themselves to quick and easy fixes.”

Such arguments are not likely to satisfy critics, and even some of Mr. Obama’s advisers have pressed him to be more active in responding to the shorter-term crises. At a confirmation hearing on Wednesday for Ashton B. Carter, the nominee for defense secretary, Republicans repeatedly bemoaned what they called the lack of a coherent policy.

“It doesn’t sound like a strategy to me,” Senator John McCain of Arizona, now the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told Mr. Carter after asking about the approach to the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL...

Read on.

Comments

Move Forward

Wed, 02/11/2015 - 7:33pm

In reply to by Paul Kanninen

<blockquote>Six years ago, there were roughly 180,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, there are fewer than 15,000. This transition has dramatically reduced U.S. casualties and allows us to realign our forces and resources to meet an evolving set of threats while securing our strategic objectives.</blockquote>
The evolving threat of daesh transitioned from the Jayvees to a group of varsity prospects while we prematurely turned over the territory from the U.S. All-Americans to an Iraq middle school team. What if NYC’s mayor took Obama’s lead and decided six years ago to reduce their 35,000 police officers down to 8% of the prior total or just 2,916 officers by 2015?

Not comparable you say? NYC has 8 million, Baghdad alone has 7 million. What if the mayor appointed only precinct chiefs who lived in New Jersey (Shiites) who didn’t like New Yorkers (Sunnis) despite having many on his force. Would crime in that city increase and New York officers follow their Jersey leaders? What if the mayor pronounced a policy of strategic patience and a plan to train neighborhood watches to weed out crime in areas where syndicates had taken over. What if the mayor elected to have a police force with nothing but SWAT team members?

“Enduring offensive ground combat operations” is barred in President Obama’s proposed AUMF but this analogy with law enforcement continues to illustrate the folly in believing peace can be attained and kept through whole of government and naval/airpower/UW means alone.

<blockquote>Moreover, we will continue to mobilize allies and partners to strengthen our collective efforts to prevent and respond to mass atrocities using all our instruments of national power. </blockquote> How does our failure to even address Syria’s Assad in this strategy jive with this statement? What sanctions and whole of government techniques could work in Syria to stop the barrel bombing and on Hezbollah/Iran to cease their support for Assad. Sometimes force is the sole option. 200,000 dead Syrians and millions of refugees. We do nothing except bomb daesh that largely evolved in response to Assad’s atrocities and our failure to support moderate Sunni fighters. Now 20,000 foreign fighters flock to daesh and we think a force of 5,000 to 15,000 trained in trickles will suffice?

<blockquote>Specifically, we shifted away from a model of fighting costly, large-scale ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in which the United States—particularly our military—bore an enormous burden. Instead, we are now pursuing a more sustainable approach that prioritizes targeted counterterrorism operations, collective action with responsible partners, and increased efforts to prevent the growth of violent extremism and radicalization that drives increased threats. </blockquote>
This comes close to saying Islamic extremism but never names it as usual. An interesting article exists in today’s War on the Rocks that compares boundaries in the Balkans and Central Asia as divided post-Yugoslavia 1990s and by the Soviets long ago into Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan.

http://warontherocks.com/2015/02/not-the-map-youre-looking-for-nations-…

The article compares these historical revisions to recent calls to divide Iraq and Syria up into new states. It criticizes that option without really demonstrating why it would fail. Despite a large “enduring” NATO ground presence in the Balkans, “occupier” casualties have been low even in Muslim-dominated areas. Likewise, only multi-ethnic Afghanistan has the bulk of civil war compared to the other “stans.” Why do we believe massive ground casualties would result from a limited ground offensive against ISIS and Assad followed by redrawn boundaries and a somewhat “enduring” presence only in Kurd areas? Some would say that is the sole solution that would solve the problem you identify here:

<blockquote>ISIL is another foe who we will not destroy with airpower or proxies. This force has its origins in social and religious issues we cannot resolve on our own. Do we need to stop their advance yes we do. We can use our military to defeat them but that will be a short term answer.

We can use our military to stabilize an area but I do not think we can resolve the deep social and religious divisions that exist in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya and many other places with our military.
</blockquote>

Paul Kanninen

Wed, 02/11/2015 - 11:24am

We possess the most powerful armed forces in the world but we have limits on how we can use them.

Do we want the Ukraine to be occupied by Russia, I do not think we do. But are we prepared to put boots on the ground and stop the Russians? I do not think we are. Nor is it an obligation of the US to do so. And I do not believe that the Ukrainian armed forces are capable of defeating the Russian Army. Acting in concert with NATO and the EU is our best option.

Trying to support weak or failing states is very difficult. Especially as so many "states" have no shared values and have never had an effective and honest civil administration.

ISIL is another foe who we will not destroy with airpower or proxies. This force has its origins in social and religious issues we cannot resolve on our own. Do we need to stop their advance yes we do. We can use our military to defeat them but that will be a short term answer.

We can use our military to stabilize an area but I do not think we can resolve the deep social and religious divisions that exist in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya and many other places with our military.

Perhaps we need to look at options other than force. Can we isolate these places and use economic and social power to help steer or direct development? How much treasure and blood is a place like Somalia worthy to the US?

Move Forward

Tue, 02/10/2015 - 2:31pm

Recall this quote from Susan Rice in announcing the new NSS:

<blockquote>"Yes, there is a lot going on. Still, while the dangers we face may be more numerous and varied, they are not of the existential nature of what we confronted during World War II or during the Cold War. We cannot afford to be buffeted by alarmism and a nearly instantaneous new cycle."</blockquote>

At the time, while I disagreed that an existential threat to the U.S. should be the sole criteria for deciding to use military force, I had to agree she was correct in an abstract sense. One similarly could go farther arguing that we faced no existential threat in WWI or WWII, either. Both theaters were far from our shores and nuclear weapons did not yet exist.

But then I heard Israel's PM making comments about the existential threat to Israel and realized how easily we could be dragged into someone else's existential conflict. If Israel bombed Iran conventionally, or launched some of its presumed nukes preemptively, it could create enormous consequences. If Russia felt sufficiently threatened by our sanctions, Putin could react using tactical nukes or conventional missiles and further aggression into NATO lands. The latter would not be an existential threat to our shores (yet) but we nevertheless would be obligated to respond as a NATO partner.

Similarly, when North Korea and Iran get operable long-range nukes or terrorists infiltrate them to a U.S. city, the result will be pretty existential to the citizens of the concerned city. If it was NYC, or another major city, other ramifications in terms of financial markets could result that would be borderline existential in terms of damage to our economy.

I also noted no mention of Syria's Assad in this NSS or how the coalition's current air war will ever remove him from power or solve the Shiite/Sunni/Kurd problem of self-governance.

Finally, if one attempts to argue that climate change is of an existential nature, such contentions are debatable at best and unknowable or false given available information. Note these two statements:

<blockquote>As the world’s two largest emitters, the United States and China reached a landmark agreement to take significant action to reduce carbon pollution. </blockquote>Yes, but China is by far the largest CO2 contributor accounting for 28% of the world total while the U.S. contributes just 16.5%. The E.U. is responsible for 11.4% and India is 4th with 5.8% of the world total. If we reduced our emissions by 25% as stated in this next quote over the next 11 years, our contribution would drop to around 12% of the world total. This would cost our economy and consumers trillions while world CO2 totals likely would increase as both China and India continue using coal and gain more emitting vehicles and power plants.

<blockquote>Over the last 6 years, U.S. emissions have declined by a larger total magnitude than those of any other country. Through our Climate Action Plan and related executive actions, we will go further with a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent of 2005 levels by 2025. Working with U.S. states and private utilities, we will set the first-ever standards to cut the amount of carbon pollution our power plants emit into the air. </blockquote>

In addition, by claiming we desire to become energy independent while simultaneously abandoning coal as an energy source and vetoing measures like the Keystone Pipeline and use of remote Alaska and federal lands, we contradict our stated goals.

Deeds not words are what counts. No deed we choose that strains middle class families through high energy costs will make a hill-of-beans difference in climate change. No rise in sea levels of inches to a foot over the next half century would create an existential crisis to our nation or most of the world. Energy needs only will increase as Third World nations become more modern. We can either keep up with those demands and keep world energy costs lower so more money can be spent on food and clean water, or we can chase diminishing returns and bankrupt progress throughout the world.