Transforming the United States global defense posture

DISAM Journal, Winter, 2003 by Douglas J. Feith

[The following are excerpts of the speech presented to the Center for Strategic and International Studies Washington, D.C., December 3, 2003.]

The policy organization at the Pentagon does two main kinds of work. There are the day-today tasks, drafting instructions for negotiators, for example, or working a coalition issue in the war on terrorism, conducting defense talks with other countries or responding to a civil war in Liberia. This topical work tends to attract the most attention from the Congress, the press and the public. But some of the most important work we do grabs few headlines. This is the longer-term thinking about US defense strategy, which is the policy organization's second major line of effort. >From the moment President Bush came into office, he has asked the Department of Defense how best to position the United States in the world for the decades ahead. He and Secretary Rumsfeld have demanding appetites for strategic thought, that is, large ideas, broad in scope, that set courses that can run many years into the future.

The name given to this effort is "transformation," because the President is determined that the Department of Defense think boldly and remake itself thoroughly, changing the way we:

* Train and equip our forces;

* Use our forces, for combat, stability operations and otherwise;

* Position those forces around the world;

* Work with allies and partners, and;

* Conduct procurement and other business activities.

Some people think of transformation narrowly as a matter of using new technologies to produce better weapons. But the concept is more comprehensive. A key facet of transformation is realigning our global defense posture, that is, updating the types, locations, numbers, and capabilities of our military forces, and the nature of our alliances. That is the aspect of transformation I want to talk with you about today.

Even before September 11, 2001, President Bush said that the security threats of the future would differ from those of the Cold War era, that they required a different way of thinking and of organizing our defenses. He campaigned on a platform of transformation. Since the Soviet empire collapsed, he observed, the world changed far more radically than our own defense doctrines, institutions, equipment and alliances had changed. I can report that the United States has made progress toward transformation during the Bush Administration. First, we have transformed our relationship with Russia. We have recognized that the hostility that characterized US and Soviet relations during the Cold War has ended, hostility that was enshrined in the doctrine of mutual assured destruction and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Accordingly, along with the hostility, we have set aside that morally dubious doctrine and that out-dated treaty. We are cooperating with Russia in many fields. And President Bush and President Putin agreed formally to make unprecedented cuts in their nuclear arsenals. At the beginning of this Administration many commentators voiced anxiety about the risks of US and Russian tensions over arms control, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) expansion and other issues. This is now a non-issue.

Second, we are transforming our alliances. Today, we have an enlarged NATO with increasing (though still far from adequate) capabilities, a good plan for streamlining NATO's command structure, a new NATO four-star command focused specifically on military transformation and an affirmative answer once and for all to that old chestnut, can NATO take on a mission out of area.'? NATO has taken on command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAR) in Afghanistan and NATO assisted Poland in assuming command of a multinational division responsible for stabilizing a portion of southern Iraq. Likewise, we are developing a more robust US and Japanese alliance, an up-to-date US and South Korean alliance, and a strengthened US and Australian alliance. Our key Asian and Pacific allies are investing in new technologies, playing roles in Afghanistan and Iraq, coordinating with us regarding global and regional threats, such as the North Korean nuclear program, and working with us to rationalize the US troop footprint in their countries to keep the alliances sustainable and capable well into the 21st century. And, of course, we are transforming US military capabilities, strategies, technology and organization, as well as hardware. As we have transformed deterrence and our alliances, we want to transform our global posture. Our current posture as John Hamre mentioned, still reflects in many ways the mentality and reality of the Cold War era, during which US forces deployed forward were defensive, tripwire units that were expected to fight near where they were based. The kind of forces used for that mission are not the agile, fast, lean forces we need for the future.

Our forces overseas should not remain positioned to fight the Cold War. In the immediate aftermath of the Soviet Union's demise, we reduced the numbers of US troops deployed forward. But they remained concentrated in their Cold War locations, from which they have had to be deployed to deal with crises elsewhere in the Balkans, the Persian Gulf, Central Asia and other locations. Key premises underlying our forward posture have changed fundamentally:

* We no longer expect our forces to fight in place; rather, their purpose is to project power into theaters that may be distant from where they are based.

* We are revising our thinking about forward deployed forces in light of our new strategic circumstances. The September 11, 2001 terrorist attack literally brought home to us how dangerous those circumstances can be: