In the very serious and expensive game of national defense, words matter. Even more than words, published documents with the President or Cabinet Secretaries' signatures are the source code of what our government will do as a matter of effort and expenditure. They are the "Ref. A." and regardless of their readability or subjective goodness, they require serious understanding and careful reading.
Readers could not ask for a better mind to look at the most recent National Defense Strategy than our friend and occasional guest poster, Bryan McGrath.
Refresh your drink of choice and dive in to his overview below. Bryan, over to you.
Following close on the heels of the Biden Administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS), the Secretary of Defense released last week the 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS) which is designed to explicate how the Department of Defense will prioritize and align to carry out the tasks assigned it (explicitly and implicitly) by the NSS. Released alongside the NDS were the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review and the 2022 Missile Defense Review, neither of which are addressed in this essay.
The lens through which this assessment is made is that of a
navalist and unreconstructed Seapower advocate. Those biases acknowledged up
front, the reader must decide whether the quality of analysis is impacted.
The document is well-written, and is a quick read,
digestible by most readers who stay abreast of national security and
international events. It is—like most of its predecessors—far more like the
strategy it replaces than it is different. We tend not to lurch but to probe.
The format of this evaluation is to assess the goods and
others of each section in turn. Verbatim quotes are in bolded italics.
LETTER OF PROMULGATION
The purpose of this section of the document is to give the
reader insight as to what the Secretary of Defense considers the most important
of the most important parts of the strategy. The letter is clear and well-written
and avoids diving too deeply into any of the more controversial parts of the
NDS.
Goods
The NDS directs the Department to act urgently to
sustain and strengthen U.S. deterrence, with the People’s Republic of China
(PRC) as the pacing challenge for the Department.
This is superb. This sentence is the entire strategy boiled
down to twenty-eight words. Would that it had remained so.
The PRC remains our most consequential strategic
competitor for the coming decades. I have reached this conclusion based on the
PRC’s increasingly coercive actions to reshape the Indo-Pacific region and the
international system to fit its authoritarian preferences, alongside a keen
awareness of the PRC’s clearly stated intentions and the rapid modernization
and expansion of its military. As President Biden’s National Security Strategy
notes, the PRC is “the only country with both the intent to reshape the
international order, and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and
technological power to do so.”
Again, this is superb. This is the problem statement, and as
such, it cannot be improved.
Even as we take these steps, we will act with urgency to
build enduring advantages for the future Joint Force, undertaking reforms to
accelerate force development, getting the technology we need more quickly, and
making investments in the extraordinary people of the Department, who remain
our most valuable resource.
There is potential for greatness in these words, as what is
implied here is the buildup of both offensive and defensive power. We will
return to them.
Others
Our central charge is to develop, combine, and
coordinate our strengths to maximum effect. This is the core of integrated
deterrence, a centerpiece of the 2022 NDS. Integrated deterrence means using
every tool at the Department’s disposal, in close collaboration with our
counterparts across the U.S. Government and with Allies and partners, to ensure
that potential foes understand the folly of aggression. The Department will
align policies, investments, and activities to sustain and strengthen
deterrence—tailored to specific competitors and challenges and coordinated and
synchronized inside and outside the Department.
We will come back to this, the creation of the term
“integrated deterrence” to somehow differentiate how the Biden team intends to conduct
what previously was known as… “deterrence.” The suggestion that previous
administrations—irrespective of party—did not do these things as the jot and
tittle of their approach to deterrence is uninformed, ahistorical, and
incorrect.
The Department will also campaign day-to-day to gain
and sustain military advantages, counter acute forms of our competitors’
coercion, and complicate our competitors’ military preparations.
Again, we will return to this concept of “campaigning” later
in the document. But when I read those words above, I find myself nodding and
saying “Yep. Deterrence.”
I.
INTRODUCTION
The introduction restates much of what was in the
Secretary’s Letter of Promulgation.
Goods
The strategy identifies four top-level defense
priorities that the Department must pursue to strengthen deterrence. First, we
will defend the homeland. Second, we will deter strategic attacks against the
United States, our Allies, and our partners. Third, we will deter aggression
and be prepared to prevail in conflict when necessary. Fourth, to ensure our
future military advantage, we will build a resilient Joint Force and defense
ecosystem.
Clear, unobjectionable. My only quibble is the annoying adoption
of the word “ecosystem”—first by the computer science world and now by all the
other cool kids to describe a “system” or a “system of systems.” But that is
just me.
We cannot meet these complex and interconnected
challenges alone. Mutually-beneficial Alliances and partnerships are our
greatest global strategic advantage – and they are a center of gravity for this
strategy. We will strengthen major regional security architectures with our
Allies and partners based on complementary contributions; combined, collaborative
operations and force planning; increased intelligence and information sharing;
new operational concepts; and our ability to draw on the Joint Force worldwide.
The strength of our economy (protected and sustained by our Navy) is the most important contributor to our military strength. The second most important contributor is our network of friends and allies (I do not capitalize “ally” or any of its variants—although I do capitalize “Seapower,” so sue me). This is clear and unambiguous here, and throughout this strategy. Time will tell whether posture decisions demonstrate our commitment to these friends and allies.
Others
The Department will advance our priorities through
integrated deterrence, campaigning, and actions that build enduring advantages.
Integrated deterrence entails working seamlessly across warfighting domains,
theaters, the spectrum of conflict, all instruments of U.S. national power, and
our network of Alliances and partnerships. Tailored to specific circumstances,
it applies a coordinated, multifaceted approach to reducing competitors’
perceptions of the net benefits of aggression relative to restraint. Integrated
deterrence is enabled by combat-credible forces prepared to fight and win, as
needed, and backstopped by a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent.
Broken record alert—integrated deterrence is deterrence—it
is not new; it is not novel. It is—as a term of art—cunningly constructed to
indicate a preference for the increased importance of (and resource allocation
from) OTHER “instruments of U.S. national power” so that defense resources can
be either applied differently or harvested for other domestic policy
preferences. The term is a creation of the DoD, and if the NSS or statements by
other key figures in the national security apparatus (POTUS, SECSTATE, NSA) is
any guide to the degree to which it has been adopted elsewhere in the “whole of
government,” one can assume it is not widely respected.
Day after day, the Department will strengthen
deterrence and gain advantage against competitors’ most consequential coercive
measures by campaigning – the conduct and sequencing of logically linked
military initiatives aimed at advancing well-defined, strategy-aligned
priorities over time. The United States will operate forces, synchronize
broader Departmental efforts, and align Departmental activities with other
instruments of national power to counter forms of competitor coercion,
complicate competitors’ military preparations, and develop our own warfighting
capabilities together with those of our Allies and partners.
The inclusion of “campaigning” alongside “(integrated)
deterrence” and “building enduring advantages” is a category error. The second
sentence in this paragraph IS deterrence. As a navalist/conspiracy theorist, I
have some anxiety about this concept. This is the camel’s nose in the tent for
those with an adolescent understanding of naval presence (the “why do you need
all those ships over there sailing around without a real mission?”) crowd, who
wish to reduce the size of the Navy and have it operated more from a surge
posture than from a forward posture.
II.
SECURITY ENVIRONMENT
Goods
This is a very well-written and conceived section that
focuses on what the Administration considers important.
Others
Climate Change and other Transboundary Challenges.
Beyond state and non-state actors, changes in global climate and other
dangerous transboundary threats are already transforming the context in which
the Department operates. Increasing temperatures, changing precipitation
patterns, rising sea levels, and more frequent extreme weather conditions will
affect basing and access while degrading readiness, installations, and
capabilities. Climate change is creating new corridors of strategic
interaction, particularly in the Arctic region. It will increase demands,
including on the Joint Force, for disaster response and defense support of
civil authorities, and affect security relationships with some Allies and
partners. Insecurity and instability related to climate change may tax
governance capacity in some countries while heightening tensions between
others, risking new armed conflicts and increasing demands for stabilization
activities.
I believe climate change is happening and that man is
contributing to it. I believe we are an adaptable species and that we can and
will adapt. I find myself often shaking my head when I read DoD officials
talking about climate change and the degree to which they attempt to steal a
rhetorical base by turning it into a national security threat. Climate change
will cause DoD to make investments in bases over time—either creating new ones
or buttressing old ones. Over a long time. If—as I am so often reminded—climate
change will cause an acceleration and intensifying of all manner of “climate
events” (a.k.a “natural disasters”), then there is a serious “say/do” mismatch
between their rhetoric and their resourcing. To wit: the Navy’s large
amphibious ships are not only important for the projection of land power
ashore, but they are among the defense arsenal’s MOST useful platforms to
mitigate human suffering in the event of natural disasters. The capacity for cargo
carrying, power generation, water-making, and food distribution—not to mention
the labor force contained therein, a labor force assembled for far more violent
ends—makes these ships invaluable. Yet the Defense Department is trying to kill
off the LPD 17 Flight II class at three ships (instead of 10), a resource
driven requirement that is not only short-sighted, but unwise.
III. DEFENSE PRIORITIES
Goods
- Defending the homeland, paced to the growing multi-domain threat posed by the PRC;
- Deterring strategic attacks against the United States, Allies, and partners;
- Deterring aggression, while being prepared to prevail in conflict when necessary –prioritizing the PRC challenge in the Indo-Pacific region, then the Russia challenge in Europe; and,
- Building a resilient Joint Force and defense ecosystem
This short section is clear and straightforward, except for the previously stated objectionable use of the term “ecosystem.”
IV.
INTEGRATED DETERRENCE
I have already spilled enough electrons in my criticisms of
“integrated deterrence,” and so I will not belabor them here. This is—to my
knowledge—the first real attempt by OSD to create a “definition” of integrated
deterrence. There is an interesting discussion in the section of “How We Will
Deter” (not “How We Will Integratedly Deter”) that brings up the standard
deterrence theory terms “denial” and “punishment”, and the degree to which THIS
administration is unwilling to cast its lot with one over the other (the Trump
team having explicitly come down on “denial”).
Others
Meeting the challenge requires a holistic response:
integrated deterrence. In the past, the Department’s approach to deterrence has
too often been hindered by competing priorities; lack of clarity regarding the
specific competitor actions we seek to deter; an emphasis on deterring behaviors
in instances where Department authorities and tools are ill-suited; and
stovepiping. Integrated deterrence is how we will align the Department’s
policies, investments, and activities to sustain and strengthen deterrence –
tailored to specific competitors and coordinated to maximum effect inside and
outside the Department.
This is a broad swipe at every single administration since
the end of WWII, and I am not aware of scholarship that backs up this view of
how deterrence has been achieved.
Deterrence by Resilience. Denying the benefits of
aggression also requires resilience – the ability to withstand, fight through,
and recover quickly from disruption. The Department will improve its ability to
operate in the face of multi-domain attacks on a growing surface of vital
networks and critical infrastructure, both in the homeland and in collaboration
with Allies and partners at risk. Because the cyber and space domains empower
the entire Joint Force, we will prioritize building resilience in these areas.
Cyber resilience will be enhanced by, for example, modern encryption and a
zero-trust architecture. In the space domain, the Department will reduce
adversary incentives for early attack by fielding diverse, resilient, and
redundant satellite constellations. We will bolster our ability to fight
through disruption by improving defensive capabilities and increasing options
for reconstitution. We will assist Allies and partners in doing the same.
So, let us review some of the terminological excesses of
this strategy. First, it attempts to create a new kind of deterrence, called
“integrated deterrence,” which is not in fact, new at all. Or even required.
Next, it raises “campaigning” to the level of deterrence, when it is in fact, a
means to achieve deterrence—deterrence by denial. The next crime is this new
concept of “deterrence by resilience,” which up until a few days ago, I had
never heard of. This is because virtually every word in how this term is
defined applies to deterrence by denial. It is an unnecessary attempt to add a
veneer of intellectual heft to an already well-understood topic.
Finally, a portion of this section is devoted to “Tailored
Deterrence Approaches” (not “Tailored Integrated Deterrence Approaches” …I am
so confused). It attempts to take highly classified approaches and plans and present
them in an unclassified fashion. Doing so is unfortunate, as this section is
not useful in an unclassified setting.
V.
CAMPAIGNING
This section is unnecessary and should have been included in
the “(Integrated) Deterrence” section.
VI.
ANCHORING OUR STRATEGY IN ALLIES AND
PARTNERS AND ADVANCING REGIONAL GOALS
Goods
The clear message here to friends and allies is that “you
matter.” Our network of friends and allies is important.
Others
The Department will seek to improve denial capability,
including resilience, particularly for those most exposed to military coercion.
If one needed more proof for my contention that “deterrence
by resilience” is just “deterrence by denial,” one only needs to consider this
sentence.
VII.
FORCE PLANNING
Goods
Our approach to force planning aims to build strength and capability in key operational areas. To maintain information advantage, the Department will improve our ability to integrate, defend, and reconstitute our surveillance and decision systems to achieve warfighting objectives, particularly in the space domain, and despite adversaries’ means of interference or deception. To preserve command, control, and communications in a fast-paced battlefield, we will make our network architectures more resilient against system-level exploitation and disruption so as to ensure effective coordination of distributed forces. To enhance our ability to deny aggression, we will improve the speed and accuracy of detection and targeting. To mitigate adversary anti-access/area denial capability, the Department will develop concepts and capabilities that improve our ability to reliably hold at risk those military forces and assets that are essential to adversary operational success, while managing escalation. For logistics and sustainment, we will reinforce our adaptability to quickly mobilize and deploy forces and to sustain high-intensity joint denial operations despite kinetic and no-kinetic attack and disruption.
This is excellent stuff, and it represents effective
thinking at DoD. Would that it were married to a sense of dread at the capacity
problems all the services face.
Others
The Joint Force will remain prepared to employ
combat-ready forces on short notice to address aggression or crisis, an ability
critical to strengthening deterrence. At the same time, the Department will
make sure that day-to-day requirements to deploy and
operate forces do not erode readiness for future missions, or bias investments
towards extant but increasingly less effective capabilities at the expense of
building capability and proficiency for advanced threats.
Further to my earlier discussion of conspiracy, this is the
Austin/Hicks DoD approach to knee-capping the Navy. One can sense the disdain
associated with the words “day-to-day requirements to deploy and operate forces
do not erode readiness for future missions, or bias investments towards extant
but increasingly less effective capabilities at the expense of building
capability and proficiency for advanced threats” as OSD continues to question
the operational value of forward based naval forces as instruments of U.S.
security and prosperity. This is the stuff of ridiculous “presence for presence’s
sake” arguments, and flies in the face of the will of the House of
Representatives (at least for now), which passed a 2023 NDAA changing the Title
10 mission of the Navy to include these vital peacetime activities. Predictably,
OSD has objected to this change, and is hoping to derail it in upcoming
House/Senate NDAA negotiations.
VIII.
BUILDING ENDURING ADVANTAGES
Goods
Transform the Foundation of the Future Force. Building
the Joint Force called for by this strategy requires overhauling the
Department’s force development, design, and business management practices. Our
current system is too slow and too focused on acquiring systems not designed to
address the most critical challenges we now face. This orientation leaves
little incentive to design open systems that can rapidly incorporate
cutting-edge technologies, creating longer-term challenges with obsolescence,
interoperability, and cost effectiveness. The Department will instead reward
rapid experimentation, acquisition, and fielding.
Any red-blooded American ought to be all for this. Any
red-blooded American who understands the system (not “ecosystem”) knows how
heavy a lift this will be.
Because Joint Force operations increasingly rely on
data-driven technologies and integration of diverse data sources, the
Department will implement institutional reforms that integrate our data,
software, and artificial intelligence efforts and speed their delivery to the
warfighter.
We have an immense amount to learn from how the commercial
world handles data, software, and AI. Continuing to try and build these
competencies within DoD—rather than aggressively partnering with industry to
provide them—is a legacy (and weakness) of the system described above.
The Department will strengthen our defense industrial
base to ensure that we produce and sustain the full range of capabilities
needed to give U.S., allied, and partners forces a competitive advantage.
Hear, hear!
Others
The Department will act urgently to better support
advanced manufacturing processes (e.g., aircraft and ship building, preferred
munition production) to increase our ability to reconstitute the Joint Force in
a major conflict.
This is the single most dangerous, simplistic, wrong-headed,
and non-strategic statement in this entire strategy. The suggestion of
“reconstitution “in a “major conflict” is a pipe dream. The complexity of what
will need to be reconstituted, along with the lack of reconstitute-able
industrial capacity, means we will fight with what we have. The time to build
and stockpile is NOW, not when the shooting starts, especially given the
prominence of the next decade in how this DoD sees the threat environment. How
this sentence survived into the final cut is beyond me.
IX.
RISK MANAGEMENT
Inside baseball and not useful to readers.
X.
CONCLUSION
Nothing objectionable in the document’s conclusion.
My conclusion raises objections. There is a gigantic hole in
this strategy, in that it does a wonderful, clear-eyed job of defining the
threat and the challenges, but then offers up a flaccid and insubstantial
justification of what it intends to do about them. The “divest to invest”
mantra we have heard so much about is out of phase with an NDS that appears to
cite a near-term threat. Pointing to “integrated deterrence” and “campaigning”
as the two of the three primary ways to achieve its ends, it offers a reduced
and destabilizing vision of what DoD does when it is not shooting at people to
shift resources from critical peacetime security and prosperity activities to,
both legitimate war-fighting needs and less legitimate domestic policy
preferences. It accelerates and deepens the path we are on—one of being better
able to fight a war that we are increasingly less able to deter. We must do
both.
Bryan McGrath is the Managing Director of The FerryBridge
Group LLC. These views are his own and do not represent those of any client.
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