Remarks to the Heritage Foundation

US Department of Defense Speeches, May 13, 2008

But in a world of finite knowledge and limited resources, where we have to make choices and set priorities, it makes sense to lean toward the most likely and lethal scenarios for our military. And it is hard to conceive of any country confronting the United States directly in conventional terms--ship to ship, fighter to fighter, tank to tank--for some time to come. The record of the past quarter century is clear: the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Israelis in Lebanon, the United States in Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Smaller, irregular forces--insurgents, guerrillas, terrorists--will find ways, as they always have, to frustrate and neutralize the advantages of larger, regular militaries. And even nation-states will try to exploit our perceived vulnerabilities in an asymmetric way, rather than play to our inherent strengths.

Overall, the kinds of capabilities we will most likely need in the years ahead will often resemble the kinds of capabilities we need today.

The implication, particularly for America's ground forces, means we must institutionalize the lessons learned and capabilities honed from the ongoing conflicts. Many of these skills and tasks used to be the province of the Special Forces, but now are a core of the Army and Marine Corps as a whole. For example, at West Point last month, I told the cadets that the most important assignment in their careers may not necessarily be commanding U.S. soldiers, but advising or mentoring the troops of other nations. What we must guard against is the kind of backsliding that has occurred in the past, where if nature takes it course, these kinds of capabilities--that is counter-insurgency--tend to wither on the vine.

There is a history here. During the 1980s, a Princeton graduate student noted in his dissertation that, about a decade after the fall of Saigon, the Army's 10-month staff college assigned 30 hours--about four days--for what is now called low-intensity conflict. This was about the same as what the Air Force was teaching at the time. That grad student was then-Army Major David Petraeus.

Going forward we must find, retain, and promote the right people--at all ranks, whether they wear stripes, bars, or stars--and put them in the right positions to see that the lessons learned in recent combat become rooted in the institutional culture. Similarly, we shouldn't let personnel policies that were developed in peacetime hurt our wartime performance.

For years to come, the Air Force and the Navy will be America's main strategic deterrent. We need to modernize our ageing inventory of aircraft, and build out a fleet of ships that right now is the smallest we've had since the late 1930s. These forces provide the strategic flexibility we need to deter, and if necessary, respond to, other competitors. The American people have been generous when it comes to funding their Armed Forces over the past seven years, and they are likely to be supportive in the future. What we should expect, though, is a heightened level of scrutiny in the Congress, and by the public, for how this money is being spent--particularly when supplemental war funds are no longer available for modernization purposes.