Fiscal Reality and the American Way of War

I am unsure if Dr. Macgregor really explained what the strategic meaning of America’s military drawdown is, or really expanded and defended the need for “high lethality/low density forces.” It seemed to be a bit of polemic directed at convenient strawmen rather than analysis and thoughtful commentary.

In sum, Dr. Macgregor basically categorized the experience of the last 10 years as irrevelant, castigated the Army and Marines as generally incompetent and unprepared to stand up against a “real enemy,” and predicted they lacked the intellectual and warfighting acumen to change themselves into something that relied on combat power disproportionate to their numbers.

I find the last comment the most flabbergasting – having been raised in an environment of maneuver warfare, German penis-envy, and Vietnam critiques, that last thing the US Army was ever accused of was being good at the tactical level. The conventional wisdom ran thus – they won in Europe only because they had more stuff than the Germans and they won tactical victories in Vietnam only because they relied on supporting arms vice rifles. Indeed, at the beginning of OIF and OEF, the Army continued to come in for criticism because it was TOO focused on fighting the conventional fight – a conventional fight based largely on facing superior Soviet numbers in the Fulda Gap and relying on supporting arms over the rifle.

So – I don’t know what to do with Dr. MacGregor’s concerns about the Army being unable to organize in a manner in which the combat power they generate is disproportionate to their numbers. It seems to be what they are regularly accused of doing…

Regarding the Marine Corps, he seems to think both that Tarawa remains the model for amphibious operations and that the Marine Corps needs to be a second land army. Well – the Marine Corps traditionally is NOT a second land army, and only has been in that role when forced to by a few, large, national emergencies. And second, the vast majority of Marine amphibious operations are not assaults against defended beaches. The Marine Corps is supposed to be a medium-weight expeditionary force employed in that manner – while it must be prepared to contribute to the challenging area denial/anti-access threat, it’s natural “place of rest” is in the mid to lower end of the conflict continuum – a force of today, ready to deploy today.

Which brings me to the “real enemy.” The one thing that those in uniform have to deal with, that so many people seem to forget, is that they actually have to face “real enemies” decision makers place them against – not the ones they’d like to fight, not the ones they’d like to avoid.

So while it is great that generations of soldiers sat facing the Soviets in the Fulda Gap, other soldiers spent a lot of time fighting with “real enemies” elsewhere, in far different environments. And while I suppose it is worth the time of Navy and Marine Corps planners to consider what two MEFs, on line, storming the Chinese mainland might look like, it seems far more likely that the “real enemies” the Marine Corps will face on a daily basis will come from “right to protect” actions, crisis response, and limited contingency operations.

It would seem to me that these last realities are the ones that really require analysis – with today’s fiscal realities, how will American continue to conduct its demonstrated way of war?