Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has learned
very little from the military trials and tribulations
of the United States over the past 50 years.
During that period, the United States has lost
three costly and avoidable wars in Southeast
Asia, Southwest Asia, and the Middle East. These
wars involved U.S. military forces for more
than 12 years in Vietnam, more than six years
(and counting) in Iraq, and eight years (and
counting) in Afghanistan.
Despite our military, intelligence, and technological
superiority, we were stymied by two countries
that had no air force, no navy, no army, no
air defense. We were able to deploy weapons
of great lethality, sophistication, maneuverability,
and firepower. Nevertheless, Secretary Gates
wants to reorient planning at the Pentagon so
that the United States could be positioned to
fight more such wars.
Despite his previous lip service to ensure
that the State Department and various civilian
agencies get more involved in implementing American
national security policy, Gates clearly wants
the Pentagon to have pride of place in international
areas outside the principal mission of military
operations. He wants to expand the military’s
role in equipping and training foreign forces,
and for educating foreign officers.
He also wants to expand the nation-building
programs that grew out of our egregious experience
in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, which the
Obama administration seems to favor for our
involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Like
his regional commanders, Gates seems to see
the Pentagon as a “big Velcro cube that
other agencies can hook to so we can collectively
do what needs to be done” in such regional
commands as the Middle East and Southwest Asia.
Gates apparently would do nothing to reverse
the trend of the recent past that allows general
officers and particularly regional commanders
to have more influence and leverage than their
civilian counterparts in the implementation
of American foreign policy.
The emphasis on adding to the ranks of the
Army, the Marine Corps, and special forces and
greater spending on low-tech weapons that are
best suited for guerrilla or irregular warfare
points to continued problems for American national
security. Gates explained that he is “just
trying to get the irregular guys to have a seat
at the table and to institutionalize the needs
they have.” Any shift in the direction
of greater funding for such counter-insurgency
operations as Iraq and Afghanistan is not encouraging.
The United States (and the Western community
in general) can point to very few military successes
in such operations and run the risk of large-scale
and long-term occupations. We invaded Iraq six
years ago when there was no connection whatsoever
between that country and U.S. national interest,
and now we are committing greater forces and
resources to Afghanistan where there is no connection
to our vital interests. President Obama and
Secretary Gates want to move in the direction
of nation building, although there is no operational
strategy for involving the State Department
and the Agency for International Development
in stabilization and reconstruction in troubled
areas.
Some aspects of the Gates’ doctrine are
laudatory, particularly the decision to scale
back spending on national missile defense; to
create a professional procurement process; to
cap production of the Air Forces’ F-22
fighter jet; to cancel production of a new presidential
helicopter; and to reduce the Army’s Future
Combat Systems. The effort to fix the procurement
system is long overdue, and even Gates’
two previous budgets were mere straight-line
projections of Donald Rumsfeld’s budgetary
and procurement agenda.
The Pentagon’s weapons-procurement system
has been a well-known disaster that presidential
administrations and congressional committees
have refused to address. In taking on the Pentagon’s
inability to make hard choices in weapons systems
or to undertake major reform, Gates is taking
on President Eisenhower’s military-industrial-congressional
complex.
A more promising development is in legislation
sponsored by Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and
John McCain (R-AZ), who want to create a director
of independent cost assessments, who would have
a senior staff with the authority to obtain
data from weapons contractors and to ensure
that costs are justified. The services, which
are responsible for cost estimates on weapons
programs, have never developed a professional
staff to provide accurate cost estimates, let
alone discipline profligate weapons manufacturers.
Last year, according to the Washington Post,
the Government Accountability Office reported
that cost overruns on the largest weapons systems
totaled about $300 billion.
Sadly, the Gates’ doctrine still points
to the United States as the “indispensable
nation,” in the words of former president
Bill Clinton and his secretary of state Madeleine
Albright, endowed by providence with unique
responsibilities and obligations.
Gates and presumably President Obama want the
United States to be able to respond to any and
all crises, even those that have no relevance
to American national interests, let alone vital
national interests. Gates wants to maintain
the offensive orientation of the Bush administration’s
foreign policy and obviously believes that American
military power will preserve law and order.
In his inaugural address, President Obama emphasized
that “power alone cannot protect us, nor
does it entitle us to do as we please.”
It does not appear that Obama’s secretary
of defense was listening.
Melvin A. Goodman,a regular contributor
to The Public Record, is senior fellow at the
Center for International Policy and adjunct
professor of government at Johns Hopkins University.
He spent more than 42 years in the U.S. Army,
the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department
of Defense. His most recent book is “Failure
of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the
CIA.”
Copyright 2009 The Public
Record
