1-7 Star Rating – Page 312 – Public Intelligence Blog

Puts RMA In Its Place, Smartly–Essential Reading,

October 11, 2000

Michael E. O'Hanlon

Graciously, and with wicked clarity, the author knocks the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs flat on its back, and then helps it to one knee. His introductory review of the RMA schools of thought (system of systems, dominant battlespace knowledge, global reach, and vulnerability or anti-access or asymmetric), with appropriate notes, is helpful to any adult student. The heart of his book can be distilled down to one chart showing the expected rates of advance in the various technical domains relevant to military operations. Of 29 distinct technical groups across sensors, computers and communications; projectiles, propulsion, and platforms; and other weapons, he finds only two technology areas-computer hardware and computer software-capable of revolutionary change in the foreseeable future. Eight others-chemical sensors, biological sensors, radio communications, laser communications, radio-frequency weapons, nonlethal weapons, and biological weapons-are judged capable of high but not revolutionary advances. All other technical areas, namely those associated with mobility platforms and weaponry itself, are unlikely to develop at anything above a moderate pace. In the course of his discussion of each of these he brings forth the basics of physics and real-world constraints and points out that even the best of our sensors are frustrated by heavy rain and other man-made countermeasures. He correctly evaluates the inability of our existing and planned Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) to keep up with targeting needs, particularly in urban and heavy canopy terrain. He also notes in passing that human intelligence may well prove to be the sustaining element in finding individual people, and that there has been no significant change since World War II in the numbers of troops needed per 1,000 inhabitants-infantry is still the core force. He systematically dismisses a variety of RMA claims, among the most dangerous being that we can afford to stand down many of our forward bases, by pointing out that combat aircraft continue to have short ranges, ground forces continue to require heavy logistics sustainment, ships remain slow to cross oceans, and it continues to be extremely difficult to seize ports and other fixed infrastructure. He concludes the book with a number of budgeting recommendations, both for the USA and for its allies. For the USA he would emphasize communications and computing, the one area truly open to an RMA in the near term. Other areas meriting immediate investments include strategic sea and air lift, the rapid development of a lighter tank and a mine-resistant infantry vehicle, and improvements in naval mine warfare. He supports the National Missile Defense and would sustain more robust RDT&E experimentation. For a major US ally, with a fraction of our funding, he recommends a $15 billion total investment over several years to acquire a thoughtful mix of advanced C4I enhancements including ground stations, a fleet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), 1000 cruise missiles, 5000 short-range munitions, 500 advanced air to air missiles, a squadron of stealth aircraft, and several batteries of theater missile defense radars and missiles. A very nice listing of major Pentagon acquisition programs supports his recommendation that we economize on major weapons platforms and pursue a high-low mixed strategy, limiting, for example, our procurement of the F-22 and joint strike fighters so as to afford more F-15s and F-16s. Overall this book fulfills its mission of reviewing technologies in relation to the future of warfare, and it provides the reader with a very strong stepping stone for venturing into the literature of defense transformation. Those who would criticize this work for failing to consider the competition or the metrics of evaluation have a point, but only a point-the book does what it set out to do. It evaluates specific technologies in relation to the inflated and often delusional claims of the proponents of the RMA. One book cannot solve all our problems, but it can, as this book does, blow away some of the foggy thinking emanating from the Pentagon and other places where a number of flag officers and their staffs have lost sight of ground truth.

2000/10/082009/12/04

Review: The Vulnerability of Empire (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs)

5 Star, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback

Adapt Our Strategy Now, Or Suffer Adjustment Failure Later,

October 8, 2000

Charles A. Kupchan

This book is extremely relevant to the forthcoming 2001 debate over alternative national security strategies. The author studies a number of cases of “adjustment failure” where great powers, at the height of their strength, engaged in self-defeating behavior-either overly cooperative behavior that resulted in strategic exposure, or overly competitive behavior that resulted in self-encirclement or over-extension. The author pays special attention to the inter-relationship between economic versus military resources (means) and international commitments (ends). Strategic culture is defined and discussed in an integrative fashion, in relation to the three levels of analysis (system, state, and individual), and is found to be the critical factor that constrains elites by trapping them in a strategic paradigm of their own making-one used to justify major expenditures that are now counterproductive, but whose abandonment would exact too high a domestic political price if reversed (such as a Revolution in Military Affairs?) The author finds that strategic culture, unlike individual strategic beliefs, is resistant to incoming information and to change. States that are in decline and states that are rising tend to fall prey to “adjustment failure” and consequently to present other states with instability issues. In both cases elites tend to utilize national propaganda and education to inculcate a mass understanding may support their intermediate objectives but ultimately frustrates strategic adjustment when they realize that what they are doing is only increasing their vulnerability. Most interestingly for the United States of America, the author finds that it is only when a state is truly in a position of strength, that it can best recognize and adapt to radical changes in the external environment-in other words, now is the time to dump the 2+ Major Theater War strategy and adopt a competing strategy that more properly integrates economic and military means to achieve our national security ends. The author concludes with several specific prescriptions that clearly pertinent to forthcoming Presidential and Congressional decisions at the dawn of the 21st Century and that must be appreciated if we are to have an effective national security policy in the next decade or two. First, the author is at one with Donald Kegan and Colin Gray in noting that the dissolution of the Soviet Union does not mean the end of U.S. strategic responsibilities in Europe; second, that at a time when there are many rising states emerging from the dissolution of the Soviet Union (as well as the fragmentation of larger states elsewhere) it is vital that these states be buffered against economic shock so as to avoid the instability conducive to the rise of aggressor governments; third, that there must be deliberate international programs in place to suppress or eliminate domestic pathologies that lead to aggressive behavior, and these must be progressively strong, beginning with economic assistance to eliminate the root causes of the instability; to sanctions and information operations as well as military preparations; and finally to outright military intervention with overwhelming force. The author explicitly notes that the international community must exercise great care to identify and decisively stop emerging aggressors before they can become full-blown aggressor states-history as documented in the case studies contained in the book suggests that when confronted by a full-blown aggressor state, members of the international community will tend toward strategic accommodations policies and tolerance of aggression rather than the decisive interventionist action easiest to adopt at an earlier stage. Finally, the author offers a prescription for avoiding surprise and confrontation, recommending that some form of international body be used to monitor and sanction any use of nationalist propaganda (such as generally precedes genocidal campaigns), and that this monitoring range from normal public sources down to educational materials used in the schools as well as government archives. By intention, the book focuses only on Europe and only on relations between states–there is much that could be done to broaden these useful insights to inform our strategy toward Asia, the Third World, specific failed states and “states of concern”, and non-state groups.

2000/10/062009/12/04

Review: Toxin (Fiction)

5 Star, Disease & Health, Threats (Emerging & Perennial)

Tells the Truth in an Engrossing Manner,

October 6, 2000

Robin Cook

If you're the type of person that does not have the time to read Laurie Garrett's BETRAYAL OF TRUST: The Collapse of Global Public Health (Hyperion, 2000), at 754 pages a real challenge, then this book, and the other books in the series, are a very worthwhile means of exploring real truths in an engrossing manner. The fact of the matter is that we are creating an increasingly dangerous environment for ourselves, with cross-contamination, increasingly resistant strains of difficult to diagnose diseases, and so on. The naive will lambast the book for scare-mongering, and they will be wrong–if this book gets you through an airline flight, or an afternoon, and causes you to think just a tiny bit about the reality that we can no longer trust our government to protect the food supply and preparation process, and to think just a tiny bit about how you might protect your children from inadequate “due diligence” by the food service industry, then you will be richly rewarded. The author himself recommends the non-fiction book by Nicols Fox, SPOILED: What is Happening to Our Food Supply and Why We Are Increasingly at Risk (Basic Books, 1997 or Penguin, 1998). The bottom line is that this novel is for serious people, and chillingly worthwhile for those who like to learn while being entertained.

2000/10/022009/12/04

Review: Preparing America’s Foreign Policy for the 21st Century

5 Star, Diplomacy

Starting Point for 21st Century Security Strategy Dialog,

October 2, 2000

David L. Boren

I know of no finer collection of relevant views on our current and prospective foreign policy challenges. In the foreword to the book, William Crowe, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then Ambassador to the Court of Saint James, observes that “A reappreciation of government is also in order.” He clearly articulates both the range of challenges facing us (most of them non-military in nature), and the disconnect between how we organize our government and how we need to successfully engage.His bottom line is clear: we are not spending enough on the varied elements of national security, with special emphasis on a severely under-funded and under-manned diplomatic service.

From Gaddis Smith and Walter Mondale to Sam Nunn and Robert Oakley, from David Gergen to David Abshire to David Boren, from Kissinger to Brzezinski to Kirkpatrick, in combination with a whole host of lesser known but equally talented practitioners, capped off by comments from five Directors of Central Intelligence, this books sets a standard for organized high quality reflection on the future of U.S. foreign policy.

Most interestingly, there is general consensus with David Abshire's view that we are in a strategic interregnum, and still lacking for a policy paradigm within which to orchestrate our varied efforts to define and further our vital interests.

David Gergen clearly articulates the shortfalls in our national educational, media, and political patterns that leave the vast majority of Americans ignorant of our foreign interests and unsupportive of the need for proactive engagement abroad. Reading this book, I could not help but feel that our national educational system is in crisis, and we need both a wake-up call and a consequent national investment program such as occurred after the first Sputnik launch.

David Boren is clearly a decade or more ahead of most current commentators in his call for a new paradigm, for a new analytical framework, for the internationalization of American education across the board. I am reminded of the quotation from early America: “A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry.” Interestingly, he cites Daniel Boorstein's caution that we must not confuse information with knowledge, and in the next sentence notes: “I watched during my term as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee while the CIA greatly increased its information, its raw data, but became overwhelmed and unable to separate the important from the unimportant.”

I would itemize just a few of the many, many useful insights that this book offers:

1) Diplomacy is the sum total of familiarity with the role, knowledge of the component parts of the overall national security policy, and the ability to design and implement comprehensive policies that achieve the national objectives;

2) Politicians and policy-makers are losing the ability to think objectively and act with conviction…they are too dependent on short-term domestic polling and opinion;

3) (Quoting Donald Kegan): Power without the willingness to use it does not contribute to world peace;

4) We must strengthen the domestic roots of national power if we are to have a sound strategy;

5) Future of U.S. education and strength of U.S. family unit will quite simply determine whether U.S. can meet the economic challenges of the 21st Century;

6) Our domestic insecurity and domestic violence-and resulting foreign perceptions and disrespect for our competence at home-reduce our effectiveness overseas;

7) U.S. is its own worst enemy, with declining attention to foreign policy matters;

8) Weapons of mass destruction are our only substantive vital interest today;

9) Hunger, pestilence, and refugees within Africa will affect all nations;

10) Corruption has replaced guerrilla movements as the principal threat to democratic governance;

11) Commerce rather than conflict will be the primary concern of 21st century foreign policy;

12) The environment joins trade and commerce as an essential objective for foreign policy;

13) Long-term non-military challenges, and especially global financial markets, require refocusing of our security perspectives;

14) Asia will edge out Europe as our primary trading partner;

15) China in Asia and Turkey in the West are linch-pin nations;

16) NATO will survive but we must take care not to threaten Russia;

17) The UN is not very effective at peacekeeping operations-it is best confined to idea exchanges;

18) Our military is over-extended and under-funded but still the best in the world;

19) For the cost of one battalion or one expensive piece of military equipment, one thousand new Foreign Service officers could be added toward preventive diplomacy;

20) Lessons from the Roman empire: its decline results in part from a loss of contact with its own heartlands, a progressive distancing of the elite from the populace, the elevation of the military machine to the summit of the power hierarchy, and blindness in perceiving the emergence of societies motivated by nationalism or new religious ideologies; and

21) We may need a new National Security Act.

If I had one small critical comment on the book is would be one of concern-concern that these great statesmen and scholars appear-even while noting that defense is under-capitalized-to take U.S. military competence at face value. I perceive a really surprising assumption across a number of otherwise brilliant contributions to the effect that we do indeed have all that we need in the way of information dominance, precision firepower, and global mobility (strategic lift plus forward presence)-we just need to use it with greater discretion. I do not believe this to be the case. I believe-and the Aspin-Brown Commission so stated-that we lack effective access to the vast range of global multi-lingual open sources; that our commitment to precision munitions is both unaffordable and ineffective (we ran out in 8 days in the Gulf, in 3 days in Kosovo); and that we fail terribly with respect to mobility-naval forces are generally 4-6 days from anywhere, rather than the necessary 24-48 hours. This book is a very fine starting point for the national dialogue that must take place in 2001 regarding our new national security strategy.

2000/10/022009/12/04

Review: Water–The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource

5 Star, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Brilliant–Puts Water in Context of War, Peace, and Life,

October 2, 2000

Marq De Villiers

I rank this book as being among the top ten I have read in the decade, for the combined reason that its topic concerns our survival, and its author has done a superior job of integrating both scholarly research (with full credit to those upon whose work he builds) and what must be a unique background of actually having traveled to the specific desolate areas that comprise the heart of this book-from the Aral Sea (“the exposed seabed, now over 28,000 square kilometers, became a stew of salt, pesticide residues, and toxic chemicals; the strong winds in the region pick up more than 40 million tons of these poisonous sediments each year, and the contaminated dust storms that follow have caused the incidence of respiratory illnesses and cancers to explode.”) to the heart of China (“According to China's own figures, between 1983 and 1990 the number of cities short of water tripled to three hundred, almost half the cities in the country; those who problem was described as ‘serious' rose from forty to one hundred.” The author provides a thoughtful and well-structured look at every corner of the world, with special emphasis on the Middle East, the Tigris-Euphrates System, the Nile, the Americas, and China; and at the main human factors destroying our global water system: pollution, dams (that silt up and prevent nutrients from going downstream or flooding from rejuvenating the lower lands), irrigation (leading to salination such that hundreds of thousands of acres are now infertile and being taken out of production), over-engineering, and excessive water mining from aquifers, which are in serious danger of drying up in key areas in the US as well as overseas within the next twenty years. The author provides a balanced and well-documented view overall. His final chapter on solutions explores conservation, technical, and political options. Two statements leapt off the page: first, that it is the average person, unaware of the fragility of our water system, that is doing the most damage, not the corporations or mega-farms; and second, that for the price of one military ship or equipped unit ($100 million), one can desalinate 100 million cubic meters of water. The bottom line is clear: we are close to a tipping point toward catastrophe but solution are still within our grasp, and they require, not world government, but a virtual world system that permits the integrated management of all aspects of water demand as well supply. This book should be required reading for every college student and every executive and every government employee at local, state, and federal levels; and every citizen.

2000/08/302009/12/04

Review: Preventive Defense–A New Security Strategy for America

5 Star, Diplomacy, Force Structure (Military)

Fully Half of the Right Answer–Bi-Partisan and Serious,

August 30, 2000

Ashton B. Carter

The authors provide a coherent discussion of fully half of the security challenges facing us in the 21st century. They wisely avoid the debate swirling around the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)-but deserve credit for their predecessor “offset strategy”-and simply note that the absence of “A List” threats gives us an opportunity to strengthen and maintain our traditional nuclear and conventional capabilities against the day when a Russia or China may rise in hostility against us. The book as a whole focuses on the “B List” threats, including Russia in chaos, a hostile China acting aggressively within its region, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and catastrophic terrorism. They note, correctly, that most of the spending and effort today is focused on responding to the crisis de jure, some but not enough resources are applied to preparing for the future, and virtually nothing is being done against the latest concept, that of “shaping” the environment through “forward engagement.” Perhaps most importantly, they introduce the term “defense by other means” and comment on the obstacles, both within the Administration and on the Hill, to getting support and funding for non-military activities with profound security benefits.Although others may focus on their discussion of Russia and NATO as the core of the book, what I found most helpful and worthwhile was the straight-forward and thoughtful discussion of the need for a new national strategy, a new paradigm, for dealing with potentially catastrophic terrorism. Their understanding of what defense resources can be applied, and of the impediments to success that exist today between state & local law enforcement, federal capabilities such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and defense as well as overseas diplomatic and intelligence capabilities, inspire them to propose several innovative approaches to this challenge. The legal and budgetary implications of their proposals are daunting but essential-their proposals for dealing with this one challenge would be helpful in restructuring the entire U.S. government to better integrate political-diplomatic-military-law enforcement operations with judicial and congressional oversight as well as truly all-source intelligence support.

Interesting side notes include 1) the early discovery in US-Russian military discussions that technology interoperability and future collaboration required the surmounting of many obstacles associated with decades of isolated (and often secret) development; 2) the absence of intelligence from the entire book-by this account, US defense leaders spend virtually all of their time in direct operational discussions with their most important counterparts, and there is very little day to day attention to strategic analysis, estimative intelligence, or coordination with diplomatic, economic, and law enforcement counterparts at home; 3) the difficulty of finding a carrier to send to Taiwan at a time when we had 12 carriers-only four appear to have been “real” for defense purposes; and 4) the notable absence of Australia from the discussion of security in Asia.

The concept of Preventive Defense is holistic (requiring the simultaneous uses of other aspects of national power including diplomacy and economic assistance) but places the Department of Defense in a central role as the provider of realigned resources, military-to-military contacts, and logistics support to actual implementation. Unfortunately the concept of Preventive Defense has been narrowly focused (its greatest success has been the dismantling of former Soviet nuclear weapons in the Commonwealth of Independent States), and neither the joint staff nor the services are willing to give up funds for weapons and manpower in order to make a strategy of Preventive Defense possible.

This resistance bodes ill for the other half of the 21st Century security challenge, what the author's call the “C List”-the Rwandas, Somalias, Haitis and Indonesias. They themselves are unwilling to acknowledge C List threats as being vital to U.S. security in the long-term (as AIDS is now recognized). I would, however, agree with them on one important point: the current budget for defense should be repurposed toward readiness, preparing for the future, and their concept of preventive defense, and it should not be frittered away on “C List” contingencies-new funds must be found to create and sustain America's Preventive Diplomacy and its Operations Other Than War (OOTW) capabilities. It will fall to someone else to integrate their concept of Preventive Defense with the emerging concepts of Preventive Diplomacy, International Tribunals, and a 21st Century Marshall Plan for the festering zones of conflict in Africa, Arabia, Asia, and the Americas–zone where ethnic fault lines, criminal gangs, border disputes, and shortages of water, food, energy, and medicine all come together to create a breeding ground for modern plagues that will surely come across our water's edge in the future. On balance, through, this book makes the top grade for serious bi-partisan dialogue, and they deserve a lot of credit for defining solutions for the first half of our security challenges in the 21st Century.

2000/08/302009/12/04

Review: Averting the Defense Train Wreck in the New Millennium (CSIS Report)

4 Star, Budget Process & Politics, Force Structure (Military), Military & Pentagon Power

Brilliant on Numbers, Need Same Focus on WHAT We Buy,

August 30, 2000

Daniel Goure

The authors provide compelling evidence of a forthcoming “train wreck” in U.S. defensive capabilities, and make a compelling case for increasing the defense budget by $60-100B a year for a mixture of preserving readiness; acquiring mid-term capabilities needed to replace a 20-30 year old mobility, weapons, and communications base force; and implementing the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). This is a well-documented and heavily fact-laden book-the authors as individuals and the case they make in general terms-must be heeded by the next President and the next Congress.

Where the book does not go, and a companion book by the same authors would be of great value, is into the detail of

WHAT threat,

WHAT force structure.

They accept, for example, the Navy's 304-ship Navy that keeps adding gigantic carriers and does nothing for littoral warfare or putting Marines within 24 hours of any country instead of 6 days.

Similarly, they accept Air Force emphasis on fewer and fewer bigger and more sophisticated platforms of dubious utility in a 21st Century environment that requires long loiter, ranges of several hundred nautical miles without refueling, full lift in hot humid weather, and survivability in the face of electromagnetic weapons in the hands of thugs.

This book demonstrates a clear mastery of defense economics, and it is an important contribution to the bottom line: our national defense is desperately underfunded, and this must be in the “top three” issues facing the 43rd President and the 107th Congress.

What we buy, and why, has not yet been answered to my satisfaction.

Category: 1-7 Star Rating

Review: Technological Change and the Future of Warfare