TAMING THE WARFARE STATE
Crafting a paradigm alterning national defense strategy in the midst of the fiscal endgame.
Abstract:
The United States is navigating a fiscal storm that demands a significant course correction in its defense strategy, leadership, and mindset. The current defense policy, anchored in obsolete structures and strategies, is akin to a ship too costly to maintain and too rickety to sail the complex waters of the 21st-century. This paper advocates for a daring new approach to national defense, seizing the fiscal crisis as a catalyst to trim the fat, streamline investments, and reset our force structure. By adopting a new grand strategy that champions diplomacy and peaceful cooperation over aggression and escalation, the U.S. will do more with less and be safer as a result.
A Modern Defense Strategy
Imagine a new national military strategy as a sleek, modern vessel. This vessel is captained by an operational National Defense Staff and crewed by new armed forces tailored to the 21st century. The Strategic focus is:
Defend the Western Hemisphere: Protect our immediate neighborhood and strengthen regional partnerships.
Maintain Strategic Military Power: Ensure our military remains a powerful and influential force globally.
Declare a “No First Use” Doctrine for nuclear weapons: Exercise restraint and send a clear message about our commitment to peaceful cooperation.
Optimizing U.S. Capabilities
The paper examines trends in force design, drawing lessons from recent conflicts to optimize U.S. capabilities, much like a shipwright refining a blueprint for a more seaworthy vessel. It also addresses the pressing need to reduce overhead by jettisoning wasteful and redundant single-service structures and reforming the civil service, like removing barnacles that slow the ship down.
A Leaner, More Effective Force
To ensure our future force is both leaner and more effective, a new human capital strategy is outlined:
Incentivize Service: Encourage talent to join and remain in the military.
Promote Younger Officers Faster: Provide them stronger winds to fill their sails and advance their careers.
Refocus Service Academies: Calibrate the compass that guides their mission by emphasizing their original purposes.
The paper concludes with a call to action, stressing the need for bold changes and new senior military leadership to correct the troubled record of U.S. military interventions in recent decades. By following President Eisenhower’s guiding principle of “safety with solvency,” the U.S. can chart a course towards effective and sustainable solutions for its national defense challenges, ensuring our ship of state sails steadily onwards.
Key Recommendations
Leverage the fiscal crisis to reduce overhead and streamline investments
Adopt a new grand strategy that prioritizes diplomacy and peaceful cooperation
Implement a new national military strategy focused on defending the Western Hemisphere and maintaining strategic military power
Establish an operational National Defense Staff and build new armed forces tailored to the 21st century
Incentivize service, promote demonstrably competent younger officers faster, and refocus service academies on their original purposes
Appoint new senior military leadership to drive change and rectify past mistakes
TAMING THE WARFARE STATE
The United States is in serious trouble at home and abroad: the post-Cold War unipolar moment has passed, and the 21st-century geopolitical landscape is shaped by sweeping social, political, and technological change. Our current defense policy, a relic from a bygone era, is an expensive and ill-fitting suit that no longer serves its purpose. The fiscal storm is upon us, and profound changes are needed to right the ship.
The Defense Elephant in the Room
The realization that the United States is in fiscal free fall is beginning to sink in. An economic crisis looms, one that bailouts and quantitative easing cannot stop. Regardless of circumstances, profound changes in defense structure, leadership, and thinking are needed. These changes will inevitably evoke strong responses from Capitol Hill and the defense industry.
The President has three choices:
Allow service bureaucracies or external events to drive outcomes, resulting in few or no savings. This is akin to letting the ship drift aimlessly, at the mercy of the storm.
Make marginal adjustments to the defense status quo, avoiding conflicts but achieving little change and only modest savings. This is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic—it won’t save the ship.
Leverage the fiscal crisis to reduce overhead, streamline defense investment, and reset the force structure, increasing capability and promising major savings. This is the bold course correction needed to navigate the storm safely.
This paper argues for the third choice: leverage change to build new, better forces for the 21st century, allowing for deep spending cuts of $400-$500 billion. This approach can both pay down the national debt and reorient U.S. military power to new forms of warfare by ending open-ended interventions without attainable political-military objectives. However, much depends on whether POTUS and Congress act wisely.
