Small Wars Journal

This Week at War: The New Pacific Theater

Fri, 09/16/2011 - 10:29pm

My Foreign Policy column discusses a new deployment plan for the southwest Pacific. Also, does the Army need to be ready for another Afghan-sized training mission?

 

The U.S. and Australia try a new military deployment plan for the southwest Pacific

This week Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flew to San Francisco to meet with their counterparts from Australia. The occasion was the anniversary of the ANZUS mutual defense treaty, signed 60 years ago in San Francisco's Presidio. That treaty was signed near the start of the Cold War, while the United States and its allies were locked in bloody combat against the Chinese army in Korea. This week's event in San Francisco was an effort to update the defense pact, with China again looming over the meeting.

Six decades later, the Korean War still seems to have a strong influence on the positioning of U.S. military forces in East Asia. U.S. ground, air, and naval forces remain concentrated in Japan and South Korea in the northwest Pacific, seemingly focused on the prospect of renewed fighting in Korea. North Korea's continued belligerence since 1950 created a requirement for a U.S. military presence in the northwest Pacific. Over the decades, the United States, Japan, and South Korea built up a basing structure to support this permanent deployment, which they have long settled into.

But China's improving air and naval power and its assertion of claims in the South China Sea are very likely moving the most important defense mission 2,000 miles south from where U.S. forces in the region are now concentrated. This mismatch is presumably not lost on the U.S. and Australian ministers gathered in San Francisco.

In addition to pledging greater cooperation on cyberdefense (a problem increasingly blamed on sources in China), the United States will gain greater access to Australian military training areas, pre-position military equipment in Australia, obtain access to Australian facilities and ports, and establish options for more joint military activities in the region.

This step-up in military coordination with Australia follows similar U.S. diplomatic forays around the South China Sea. In 2005, the United States and Singapore signed a strategic framework agreement on military cooperation that was expanded this year with an agreement to deploy new U.S. Navy littoral combat ships to Singapore. The deepening of this agreement will enhance the ability of the U.S. Navy to support the multilateral military training exercises it leads every year with partners around the South China Sea.

However, Washington appears to be taking a notably different approach in the southwest Pacific. Unlike its agreement with Japan and South Korea, the new agreements with Australia and Singapore, along with other low-key arrangements with the Philippines and others in the region, do not call for the permanent basing of U.S. combat units in these countries. Both the United States and its partners in the region have an interest in maintaining the "forward presence" of U.S. military forces in the region. But the permanent bases and garrisons in South Korea and Japan have become corrosive, especially on Okinawa, where the local population has become hostile to the U.S. military presence. In addition, restrictions on training areas in Japan and South Korea are impairing the readiness of U.S. forces there and reducing the utility of their presence.

The model the U.S. planners appear to have in mind for Australia, Singapore, and around the South China Sea involves regular and frequent training exercises, temporary access to host countries' facilities, and frequent consultation by staff officers and advisors. For training exercises or in response to crises, U.S. air and ground forces would fly in and meet up with pre-positioned equipment, with naval forces arriving soon thereafter. This method would avoid the political friction the United States has encountered in Japan and South Korea and allow U.S. soldiers to remain at bases inside the United States that have better training facilities and provide better living arrangements for soldiers and their families.

This new method of providing security for the southwest Pacific remains mostly a theory and will face increasing pressure if Chinese forces eventually threaten easy access to the region. But if the model succeeds, it could call into question the utility of maintaining the existing garrisons on Okinawa and South Korea, which in any case are increasingly untenable as the Chinese missile threat expands. The trick for U.S. military strategists and diplomats will be implementing this more flexible deployment model while simultaneously reassuring regional partners that U.S. security commitments are as firm as ever. As pressures increase, that trick may not be easy to pull off.

 

Does the Army need to prepare for another Afghanistan-sized training effort?

It took 20 hours this week for Afghan police and international troops to subdue the Taliban insurgents who attacked several high-profile sites in downtown Kabul, including the U.S. Embassy compound. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker described the attack as "not a very big deal," while the coalition military commander, Marine Gen. John Allen, conceded that the Taliban "did get an IO [information operations] win on this." Eleven Afghan civilians, four police officers, and 10 insurgents were killed during the battle.

Although the attack did not display much Taliban expertise or have much lasting effect, it raises questions about whether the effort to train Afghan security forces is on track. Last week the RAND Corp. released "Security Force Assistance in Afghanistan," a detailed study of the training program and its lessons for future large-scale training efforts. The report described the immense challenges specific to the Afghan case and cataloged numerous suggestions to improve the program.

The Pentagon and the rest of the U.S. government have learned quite a lot about security force assistance from Afghanistan. There is a near-consensus among policymakers that successful assistance programs elsewhere in the world should be an effective and low-cost way of both preventing conflict and lowering the probability of future U.S. military interventions. The question for the Pentagon is whether the Afghanistan case, with its high level of difficulty, should be the standard scenario that U.S. forces prepare for.

The RAND authors found numerous shortcomings with the Afghan security force assistance program during the time of their field research. That research wrapped up in 2009 just at the time U.S. policy in Afghanistan was undergoing a major overhaul, many changes in top leadership occurred, and a large infusion of additional troops, equipment, and money came in. The researchers found that the assistance effort in Afghanistan lacked a tight linkage to the actual security requirements in the country, lacked appropriate measurements for tracking progress, and did not match up well with the enfeebled capacities of the rest of the Afghan government. In spite of the steep challenges of training an indigenous army in war-torn and largely illiterate Afghanistan, much has improved since 2009, some perhaps due to the interaction between the researchers and the training staff in Afghanistan.

U.S. policymakers have high hopes for using security force assistance to build up regional deterrence, help partners prevent insurgencies and lawlessness, and reduce the demand on U.S. forces for global security. Security force assistance and foreign internal defense training are normally tasks for special operations forces. But the training requirements in Afghanistan and Iraq were so large that conventional forces were drawn into the effort. The U.S. Army established new doctrine and wrote training manuals for conventional combat units reassigned to assistance duties.

But a sharp reduction looms for the Pentagon's budget, with the Army facing a substantial cut to both its force structure and very likely its training budget (indeed, the assistance effort in Afghanistan is getting a big cut). The Army envisions its combat forces having mastery of "full spectrum operations," which could range from complex high-intensity offensives to "wide area security," peacekeeping, support to civil authorities -- and security force assistance.

But reductions in manpower and money for training will likely require officials to set priorities and make choices. Regarding security force assistance, Pentagon leaders will have to make a judgment about how many training resources should be consumed preparing conventional ground combat units for training duties. Do policymakers predict another "worst case" Afghanistan-scale assistance scenario, requiring training resources far above the capacities resident in the special operations forces? If so, in what other areas of conventional readiness are they —to take risks?

Over the past decade, U.S. soldiers have learned a lot about training indigenous security forces. Skill at security force assistance is a major U.S. asset just like aircraft carriers, fighter jets, and missiles. And it will have to compete with those other assets during the looming budget crunch.

Comments

Bill C.

Sun, 09/18/2011 - 10:40pm

From the article:

"Last week the RAND Corporation released SECURITY FORCE ASSISTANCE IN AFGHANISTAN, a detailed study of the training program and its lessons for future large-scale training efforts."

Do we, today and in the future, incur some significant risk by not having such a force, to wit: one capable of doing "large-scale training missions" such as that which we have undertaken in Afghanistan (reactive, w/the requirement to do nation-building, and in a very remote and [by our standards] primitive and backwards locale)?

Stated another way: If we had had such a "large-scale training missions force" pre-9/11 -- would the having of such a "standby" force have gone a long way in precluding the 9/11 event?

Or would the maintaining of such a force -- along with the clear intent to use it -- have given the enemy then -- and future such enemies today and tomorrow -- even greater incentive to do a 9/11-like event; so as to, per their strategy, cause us to intervene in this or some similar manner?

(The rationale for having and employing "large-scale training forces" -- whose purpose is to be used only [a] proactively, [b] minus the requirement to do nation-building and/or [c] in more favorable environments [to wit: NOT as in Afghanistan]; this being considered to be a very different and, therefore, a very separate consideration and question.)

Bill C.,

A large part of what you're hitting on is determining where we assume risk. Your question about is it really relevant if one of the most backwards places in the world becomes a modern society is appropriate. Nation building will be more important elsewhere where modern or at more modern than Afghanistan collapse due to manmade or natural disaster, and in cases like that where you probably already have an educated workforce and a perception of what constitutes a legitimate form of governance the process of nation building will be much easier (not easy), such as we experience in both Japan and Germany. I don't think we can afford to assume risk on major attacks on our homeland or a large tactical loss in battle. Foremost we need a DOD structure that can fight, although every effort should be made to deter and prevent conflict.

"The question for the Pentagon is: Whether the Afghanistan case, with its high level of difficulty, should be the scenerio that U.S. forces prepare for."

In order to better address this question, might we attempt to define the "Afghanistan case" and its "high level of difficulty" somewhat more fully, for example:

a. As being a reactive rather than a proactive engagement.

b. As having a significant "state and societal transformation and incorporation" component thereto (nation-building/modernization). And

c. As attempting to do this (defeat the enemy while, and/or by, building a nation) in one of the most remote, backward and, some might say, strategically least important areas of the world.

Might such questions as these help us to determine what our future force structure should be -- by asking whether we should expect to -- rather frequently -- (1) do this again, (2) in this same way (3) on this same scale (4) in similar locales and (5) for similar reasons? (Thus, as per an "Afghanistan-like case.")

Relying on rotational units would assumes a consistent global order where international relations remain consistent over time, and we retain our superpower influence in the region. The first assumption has been proven false, and it appears that the rise of China with the concurrent downtrend in U.S. and Japan's economic influence makes this highly doubtful that we will retain the same level of influence we currently weld.

While permanent bases may be a point of contention, as Dave pointed out that resistance has ebbed and flowed due to regional variables (largely the behavior of the regional actors), but in the end most people in the region know they have served both regional and our interests well. Anyway I don't think anyone is looking seriously at closing shop in East Asia, and the discussions on temporary bases are actually additive to our current efforts to maintain presence and strengthen our relations in the region.

Dave Maxwell

Fri, 09/16/2011 - 11:33pm

Two things to consider here. First, the permanent basing issue goes in cycles. While they have been "corrosive" in Okinawa (and Korea) some of that rust has been scraped off and painted over and there is at least less resistance if not support for US bases in Korea and Japan especially in view of north Korean threat and Chinese actions.

Second, while perhaps good in theory to not base US forces in the South Pacific and Southeast Asia, given the US fiscal crisis and our own domestic politics one of the easiest things to cut from the budget are training exercises that require deployment of large numbers of troops over long distances. No a problem so much for the Navy and Marines since the cost of their deployments can be considered "sunk costs" since the money is spent on their deployment and as long as we are going to keep ships and Marines afloat then they can deploy to these areas for short term presence and training exercises. But large numbers of ground forces will easily be cut from the budget as a cost saving measure and then there will be a perception of declining commitment to our friends, partners, and allies in the region.

The real problem comes in the second article of Mr. Haddick's and this quote sums it up:

"Over the past decade, U.S. soldiers have learned a lot about training indigenous security forces. Skill at security force assistance is a major U.S. asset just like aircraft carriers, fighter jets, and missiles. And it will have to compete with those other assets during the looming budget crunch."

I think he is absolutely right in that we have to look at skills of security forces assistance (as much as I hate that we have had to invent a new term) as a major US asset just like carrier battles, fighters, and missiles and the capability needs to be properly resourced (that is of course assuming that our future strategy is going to have as a component the requirement to be able to train and advise foreign military forces).

But this capability is not as easily quantifiable as a "thing" like a ship or tank or fighter that you can see and put your hands on. The resources required to sustain the SFA capability are easily cut when the budget axe falls. Because of that the so called "New Pacific Theater Strategy" will soon be at risk if it is based on rotational deployments of forces.