Readiness and War in a Globalized System - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Nov, 2000 by Llewellyn D. Howell

ONE OF THE MOST CRITICAL FACTORS in strategic planning is the ability to anticipate surprise, to look ahead. It is the ability to deal with a wide variety of circumstances in a complex international environment, but it does have to be coordinated in some clear vision of the future.

Republican military thinking in Campaign 2000 seems to have had a clear vision of the past. As expressed by vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney, the U.S. needs to be ready to fight the Korean War and the Gulf War (again) simultaneously. The fact that the Pentagon's system of measuring readiness uses these same terms is a reflection on its own reactive nature and symbolizes a critical fault in American strategic thinking.

Elements of every society seem to continue to try to hold back and even reverse globalization. Such are the cults that try to stop the sunrise or, as United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has put it, "argue against the laws of gravity." It is not only pointless, but counterproductive, since the time wasted means that less coordinated and cooperative effort is put into shaping the direction of globalized human productivity. Annan has warned that "the world around us is changing, and we change with it or we will be left behind. We have to adapt to the realities outside."

Most of us have recognized that globalization encompasses much more than just a global economy, with its movements and distribution of goods, jobs, and capital. It clearly includes political and cultural implications that have upset conservative elites around the globe. It affects environmental considerations, international standards of law, social developments, and human rights. Neglected in this complexity is the understanding that globalization affects military strategy. In a globalized system, when we militarily set upon an opponent, the opponent is us.

The reason is because globalization is also integration. Here's what happens: As the economies of nations spread into one another with production facilities dispersed widely and markets totally enmeshed, a military attack by one country on another may mean bombing its own factories or markets in a cross-border war. To keep the global economy on an even keel, some accommodation has to be made across national boundaries on wage rates and the treatment of workers. That is, human rights in any country become a critical matter for every country. One national system cannot condone slave labor while others respect the rights of labor to organize. When human fights are abused, with economic effects, they may need correction with the assistance of military forces from outside the national system. Simple humanitarianism has its merits--this is economic and political self-interest--and that defense of human rights may be necessary at any time and virtually anywhere on our increasingly smaller planet. There is a simple philosophy that should serve as a guide: If you have a good maintenance man, you will seldom need to bring in the repairman.

There is a concession among most on both sides of the American readiness debate that is not simply a question of whether we are ready to fight a war or two, but of what we are ready for. Yet, there are problems on both sides of this equation. Regarding "what," the Defense Department counts readiness in terms of fighting major ground wars, with air and naval support. Republican campaign criticism seemed to echo this perspective, disregarding the active use of large parts of the 10th Mountain and 1st Mechanized Infantry divisions in Kosovo and Bosnia. Yet, if we are ready for wars (or at least use of troops) to maintain a global peace, establishing a presence in Kosovo and Bosnia and Rwanda are exactly what our military forces have to be doing. On the whether side of the readiness equation, we need to be taking into consideration several other aspects of military preparedness. These include:

Morale of the forces. Pay should be high enough and housing and health care good enough for members of the armed services to regard the military as a profession and a career. It is as important to us as any aspect of civil service.

Adaptability of the personnel. A critical aspect of preparedness in a global system has to be training to deal with managing civilians in foreign circumstances. Soldiers have to know who not to shoot as well as who to shoot and how to deal with circumstances where culture and language play critical roles in determining which is which. Especially, we need to be able to put troops in central Africa or northern Sumatra as quickly as we put them in Eastern Europe.

Mobility and transportation. This isn't just distance. Our armed forces should be able to get to and fight in deserts, mountains, and jungles; in bitter cold and humid heat; in snake-infested swamps and high-rise office buildings. If there is any lesson we learned from Vietnam, it is to be able to fight tar from the comforts of American culture, for extended periods of time.

Ability to cooperate by the government and military leaders. We aren't going to fight any more wars by ourselves, and the entire burden of readiness can't be left on the servicemen on the ground. Every fight we have will require allies. It falls primarily on a president, as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, to find and create those allies.