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Towards a More Modest American Strategy

David A. Shlapak

To cite this article: David A. Shlapak (2015) Towards a More Modest American Strategy, Survival,
57:2, 59-78, DOI: 10.1080/00396338.2015.1026068

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Towards a More Modest
American Strategy
David A. Shlapak

The debate over national-security strategy in Washington is seemingly

bracketed by two similar choices: sustaining American primacy and expand-
ing American primacy. This fixation is remarkably arrogant, unnecessarily
ambitious and unsustainably expensive; it has done, and will do, little to
improve the lives of the great majority of the country’s citizens.
America’s recent track record as the sole superpower is not particularly
enviable. Two largely unsuccessful wars have left the greater Middle East
more violent and less stable than it was beforehand. More than two decades
of bipartisan efforts to shape Russia into a peaceful member of a ‘Europe
whole and free’ have resulted in total and humiliating failure. A confused
approach toward China, combined with Beijing’s own assertive behaviour,
has created a dangerous and deepening security dilemma in the Western
Pacific. None of these appears to have done anything to cool the enthusi-
asm of those who believe that American leadership is essential to sustaining
whatever kind of global order they imagine they see. This is puzzling, and
should be most worrisome.
What is needed is a national debate that challenges long-held but increas-
ingly maladaptive assumptions about America’s role in the world and how
it should identify and deal with challenges to its security. This essay offers a
starting point for that debate. The evidence offered in support of its proposi-
tions is deliberately polemical, necessarily sketchy (given the breadth of the

David A. Shlapak is a Senior Defense Research Analyst with the RAND Corporation. The views expressed in
this article are those of the author, and do not reflect those of RAND or the sponsors of its research.

Survival | vol. 57 no. 2 | April–May 2015 | pp. 59–78DOI 10.1080/00396338.2015.1026068

60 | David A. Shlapak

topic) and highly selective. The purpose is not to definitively establish each
statement’s validity, but to provoke a discussion on whether or not it might
be true – and, if so, what to do about it.

The unipolar moment is over

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the world has experienced a situation
unparalleled in the Westphalian era, and quite possibly since the heyday of
Rome’s dominance. For the past two decades, the United States has stood
alone as the world’s only remaining true great power.1 Even if this status
did not afford the United States the ability to have its way at every turn, US
primacy gave the country a freedom of strategic action – and particularly of
military action – all but unseen in modern history.
This unipolar moment, however, has been profoundly ahistorical, and
was always fated to end. Whether we ascribe this to reversion to the norm,
systemic rebalancing or the rise of a challenger, there can be little doubt that
unquestioned US dominance is a tide that is ebbing.
The analogy to the post-war economic system is instructive, if some-
what depressing. In 1945, the United States was the only great power whose
economy had not been devastated by the Second World War. America took
advantage of this deeply aberrant circumstance not only to construct a
domestic economy whose prosperous coat-tails its citizens still ride, but also
to rebuild much of a shattered world.
Perhaps most importantly, the United States used its economic domi-
nance to put in place international institutions and arrangements that,
almost seven decades later, remain the foundation of a global trade and
financial order that has served the rest of the world as well as it has served
America. The norms and structures established during the era of US eco-
nomic hegemony ignited and sustained not just the revitalisation of Europe
and Japan, but the rise of the ‘Asian tigers’ and other new economies, the
success of which spelled the doom of American dominance itself. The rela-
tive decline of the US economy, in other words, was not only the inevitable
result of an inescapable historical process – the world’s recovery from the
cataclysm of global war – but also the deliberate outcome of how the United
States chose to use its unrivalled power.
 Towards a More Modest American Strategy | 61

There is nothing to suggest that the United States’ time as the sole mili-
tary great power will leave such a constructive legacy. This may, to some
extent, be inevitable. The contemporary international economic order is
broadly understood to be a positive-sum system, one in which the well-
being of all participants can simultaneously increase. Conversely, the global
security environment is typically seen as zero-sum; one actor’s power gain
must entail losses for others. This makes it very difficult to impose durable
rules of the road for security interactions.
Sadly, the residuum of US dominance may go beyond the absence
of a positive inheritance – it may, in fact, be negative. America used its
power to intervene in sometimes capricious ways, promulgated a doctrine
of preventive and pre-emptive warfare, and warned the world at large
that ‘either you are with us or you are with the terrorists’.2 America’s ‘war
on terror’ was in many quarters interpreted as a war on Islam, and the
botched campaign in Afghanistan, among other consequences, has con-
tributed to destabilising nuclear-armed Pakistan. The 2003 invasion of Iraq
overthrew a reprehensible dictator but left behind a country in violent
disarray, and created an opportunity for Iran to expand its regional influ-
ence. Afghanistan will not emerge from a decade-plus of US-led war as a
secular democracy. American power could not keep down the price of oil,
nudge Israel and Palestine towards a legitimate peace process (let alone a
lasting peace) or halt genocides in Rwanda, Sudan and elsewhere. It did
not stop North Korea from building a nuclear weapon, nor does it seem to
be dissuading Iran from at minimum developing the capability to pursue
one. While the world may not be worse off for America’s exercise of its
enormous power over the past 20-odd years, it is not at all clear that it is
better off.
Nor has America’s military pre-eminence paid dividends at home.
Including future costs for veterans’ medical care and disability payments, a
Harvard study concluded that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will wind
up costing the US between $4 and $6 trillion.3 Over 6,700 American service
members have lost their lives in the two wars, with another 51,000 wounded
in action.4 Disputes over the appropriate uses of US military muscle have
contributed to the polarisation of American political life.
62 | David A. Shlapak

There is also little evidence that the roughly $12trn the United States
has spent on its military since the end of the Cold War has propelled the
economy forward. During that span, the years when defence spending as a
percentage of GDP was at its lowest were those that experienced the great-
est economic growth.5 Some analyses have concluded that the ‘multiplier
effect’ of defence spending – the total impact on the economy of every dollar
expended on the military – is actually less than one (meaning GDP increases
by less than a dollar for every one the Pentagon spends), and far lower than
that of other forms of government spending.6 Meanwhile, the United States
in 2012–13 had a larger defence budget than the next eight biggest military
spenders combined.7 While it can certainly be argued that no other nation
has global responsibilities like America’s, that gap is still remarkable.

Strategy looks out, not in

Military strength, however, is not the same as ‘leadership’. All parties to
the official debate about the future of national security appear to agree on
an expansive definition of America’s role in the world. The administration’s
2012 guidance gave the game away with its title, ‘Sustaining US Global
Leadership’. In his prefatory remarks to that document, President Barack
Obama commits the country to a future with an ‘even stronger’ military that
‘preserves American global leadership [and] maintains military superiority’,
and asserts that we live ‘in a changing world that demands our leadership’.8
This belief is bipartisan. In a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in
July 2012, then-candidate Mitt Romney said:

I do not view America as just one more point on the strategic map, one
more power to be balanced. I believe our country is the greatest force
for good the world has ever known, and that our influence is needed as
much now as ever. And I am guided by one overwhelming conviction and
passion: This century must be an American Century.9

The world is indeed complicated and messy, but this does not mean
that it demands American global leadership. The world has always been
complicated and messy; the human tendency to see our own time as
 Towards a More Modest American Strategy | 63

uniquely problematic inevitably distorts our perspective. Even were the

contemporary scene uniquely complex, it would not put a premium on US
power. Furthermore, it is not clear that America’s supremacy has begotten a
world that is safer, more stable, or more affluent. There is no coherent first-
principles argument that a world led by a militarily dominant United States
is inherently more peaceful or prosperous than some possible alternative.
There is also a frequently overlooked difference between being the
world’s greatest military power and being its leader. China, India, Indonesia,
Pakistan, Russia, Egypt and Iran – seven countries who together account for
nearly half of the planet’s population – almost certainly do not see them-
selves as being led in any meaningful way by the United States. While the
US does have great influence in the world, this flows less from its military
prowess – employment of which has been frustrated at least as often as it has
been successful – than from the strength of its economy, the creativity of its
people and the example it provides of an enduring, pluralistic democracy.
Each of these is threatened by an overbearing and excessively militarised
approach to the world.
There can likewise be little doubt that the United States’ recent security
policy has undermined the nation’s claim to moral leadership. Abu Ghraib,
‘extraordinary rendition’, the wildly unpopular invasion of Iraq, the use
of torture in the ‘war on terror’, the noxious surveillance state revealed by
recent leaks and the controversy surrounding Washington’s lethal use of
drones will long haunt America’s reputation.
It should be remembered, meanwhile, that threats to the Department of
Defense (DoD)’s institutional interests are not the same as threats to American
security. If US global ‘leadership’ is a commodity of questionable value, and
military pre-eminence of questionable utility in attaining it, the argument for
maintaining superiority indefinitely must hinge on the number and severity
of threats the nation confronts.10 And, indeed, a wide array of such challenges
are frequently cited as justifying – even demanding – dominance.
The 2012 defence guidance, for example, warns of ‘violent extremists’
with ‘the potential to pose catastrophic threats that could directly affect our
security and prosperity’.11 The catastrophic dangers are not specified; it is
simply assumed that the reader will accept their existence. Threats to the
 64 | David A. Shlapak

so-called ‘global commons’ – the maritime, electronic and orbital lines of

communication through which the world’s trade and finances flow – are
also cited as major dangers, although again, who is endangering them, to
what extent and to what ends is not publicly explained.12
Current planning should not necessarily be the baseline for future
strategy. There is an implicit but foundational assumption behind much
of the discussion about the DoD’s future: that the status quo is the stand-
ard against which all changes should be measured and, for the most part,
resisted. This thinking is akin to looking outside during a thunderstorm
and concluding that everyone should always keep their umbrellas open.
The long-term status quo, from the republic’s found-
ing to the Second World War, was to field minimal
Today’s military armed forces, except in times of emergency. Even
the more recent narrative, from the end of the Cold
is the product of War to the events of 11 September 2001 – which, by
an aberration the way, a larger, more powerful military could not
have prevented – is one of reductions in size and
budgets. Today’s military is, again, the product of an aberration – a pro-
found deviation from the nation’s traditional approach to addressing its
security concerns. The first step toward properly shaping the military the
nation needs for the future is, in fact, to return to the old normal.
In November 2011, all four then-service chiefs testified before Congress
on the potential consequences of sequestration. Air Force General Norton
Schwartz said that ‘dire consequences’ would ensue if the Pentagon were
asked to absorb budget cuts ‘far beyond’ those envisioned by the Budget
Control Act.13 Admiral Jonathan Greenert warned of ‘severe and irrevers-
ible’ damage to the navy resulting from budget cuts.14 General James Amos
cautioned against ‘significant risk’ arising from cuts in Marine Corps end
strength, while Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno said that further
cuts would be ‘catastrophic to the military’ and subject the nation to ‘an
unacceptable level of strategic and operational risk’.15
The latter argument in particular confuses the interests of the armed
forces and the Department of Defense with those of the nation. A chain of
logic, analysis and argument must be articulated to legitimately connect
 Towards a More Modest American Strategy | 65

reductions in defence spending with ‘dire consequences’ for American secu-

rity. Those links have not been forged. Instead – and whatever the good
intentions of those involved – the Pentagon has developed a set of practices
that are heavily biased toward maintaining the status quo. The services,
inevitably seeking, among other things, to protect their budgets and force
structures, dominate the process by which a set of scenarios and analytic
approaches are created. These are then used to derive requirements for
those same force structures and budgets. It cannot be surprising that such a
circular approach does little to produce new and innovative thinking.
The United States remains, in essence, a continental power buffered by
two oceans that, while not as functionally large as they once were, sub-
stantially insulate it from the troubles of the rest of the world. This, among
other things, means that since 1945 every American war save one has been
a war of choice, and the ultimate value of fighting each has been question-
able. Stalemate in Korea and defeat in Vietnam did little to materially affect
the well-being of the United States as a whole, though the disagreements
over the wisdom of the latter tore at the fabric of the country. Victories in
Grenada, Panama, Kuwait and Kosovo arguably brought few direct benefits
to the United States. The costs in money and blood of the Iraqi and Afghan
adventures have already been described; there seems little doubt that the US
would have been far better off not fighting the first one at all and prosecut-
ing the second very differently.
Some of these conflicts were virtuous attempts to undo unprovoked
aggression or rescue threatened populations, and the intangible results in
terms of stability and humanitarianism may have made them worthwhile.
But that does nothing to alter the fact that of these wars, from Korea through
Iraq, only one – the first phase of the Afghan conflict – was waged in
response to a direct threat to the safety and security of the American people.
The others were optional.
One of the responsibilities of strategy is to place limits on ambition,
which means above all seeking to distinguish the things that one cannot
tolerate from those one would prefer not to happen. Happily free by virtue
of geography from the danger of invasion, the sole national-security abso-
lute for the United States is the requirement to prevent, with the highest
66 | David A. Shlapak

possible degree of confidence, a nuclear attack on the homeland by a well-

armed state adversary. No other contingency, including a nuclear attack
with a single terrorist weapon or one or two crude intercontinental ballistic
missiles (ICBMs), presents a truly existential threat. Maintaining a robust
deterrent against this catastrophe – absent reductions in global nuclear
arsenals sufficient to make the danger disappear – is and must remain the
primary mission of US armed forces.
Beyond the need for a powerful strategic deterrent, the case for the US
military must be based on the nation’s perceived need or desire to prosecute
wars of choice, of which there are an almost infinite variety. For which ones
shall we prepare?

Making choices
Any attempt to limit the number and kind of conflicts for which it is deemed
necessary to prepare is inevitably met, from one quarter or another – usually
the one whose budget is most endangered by the outcome—with the objec-
tion that the United States always ends up fighting a war it did not expect.
Far from being a condemnation of the exercise of strategic choice, however,
this statement is a celebration of its success. The wars we worry about are
the ones we strive to prevent; being forced nonetheless to fight them would
signify the abject failure of US strategy. The United States has in fact been
remarkably successful in this regard since 1945; for almost 70 years, it has
not been forced to fight a single conflict that it has actively sought to deter.
During this period it has only fought two conflicts even of the type it sought
to deter – large-scale conflict with heavily armed enemy forces – and then
only because of gross strategic miscalculations on the part of the enemy
(Kim Il-sung in 1950 and Saddam Hussein in 1990). To the extent we succeed
as planners, we will always fight unexpected wars.
That the future is uncertain likewise does not mean that all uncertainties
are equally dangerous. The relevance of a scenario for planning is tied to
its risk – the product of an event’s likelihood and the severity of its conse-
quences. The US invested heavily in preparing for a surprise Soviet nuclear
attack even when most observers believed its likelihood was very small,
because the costs of deterrence failure were seen as astronomical. The art
 Towards a More Modest American Strategy | 67

of strategy in many ways boils down to doing those calculations correctly,

drawing the line between the contingencies for which to prepare and those
to ignore with wisdom and prudence.
So, what are the threats of sufficient likelihood and gravity to justify
preparation? If the United States wishes to sustain a substantial degree
of military presence and influence in the Far East, the growth of Chinese
power presents an inherent challenge.16 The ability to counter Chinese
power projection, especially across water (a topic to which we will return
below), appears to be the key to protecting US allies and interests in the
fairly unlikely event that Beijing moves aggressively against them.17
In Europe, Russian irredentism has revived the prospect of a threat to
America’s NATO partners, particularly to its most exposed allies, the essen-
tially defenceless Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Whether the
danger is of ‘little green men’ or conventional aggression, it is one that must
be met by the Alliance as a whole, not just or even primarily by the United
States. Four European NATO members alone have individual GDPs greater
than Russia’s, so it is disingenuous for America’s partners to plead poverty
as an excuse for not meeting the challenge.18 If the security of Europe is not
important enough for Europeans to invest in, it is unclear why it should
warrant substantial US expenditure. Given the parlous state of Russia’s
military, a relatively modest NATO investment should suffice to establish a
fairly robust deterrent against any opportunistic Russian attack.
The shifting balance of hydrocarbon production and consumption,
which appears to be increasingly favourable to the United States, will allow
America to reduce its need for oil from the Middle East and West Africa,
potentially allowing for a sea change in its fraught relations with the coun-
tries of those troubled and unstable regions.19
On general principles, the US may wish to retain the ability to defeat
aggression in the Persian Gulf, but the precise scenarios need to be defined.
Iraq no longer poses a conventional threat to its neighbours, and the other
Gulf Arab states never did. Iran is a potential malefactor, but except for Iraq
it shares no significant land border with any Gulf country, and its conven-
tional military capabilities are anaemic. The biggest dangers Iran appears
to pose are not those associated with straightforward territorial aggression:
 68 | David A. Shlapak

rather, they include missile strikes on neighbouring states, coup de main

operations against small islands or oil and gas platforms in the Gulf, spon-
soring irregular warfare around the region and, of course, trying to close
the Strait of Hormuz to shipping. Helping America’s Arab friends deal with
these threats is largely the domain of building partner military capacity, air
and missile defence, counter-mine and anti-submarine warfare, and some
limited amount of land-attack capacity.
The US will certainly want to deter Iran from using any nuclear weapons
it may eventually develop. The ‘mad mullah’ theory of Iranian governance
– the belief that a nuclear-armed Tehran will seek an apocalyptic showdown
with its infidel enemies and therefore prove undeterrable – is at variance
with the Islamic Republic’s foreign-policy track
record, which, though often confrontational and
The brutality of frequently annoying, has never been suicidal.
While the preferred outcome certainly remains a
ISIS is self-limiting non-nuclear Iran, the best response to its acquisi-
tion of nuclear weapons would be the construction of a deterrent framework
that emphasises the need for crisis stability between Tehran and Israel and
reduces the pressure for further proliferation among Iran’s neighbours,
with the entire structure necessarily backstopped by the United States.
The second concern is jihadist extremism, which has its deepest roots
in the Sunni heartland of the Arabian Peninsula. Patient, careful law-
enforcement and intelligence work, supported as needed by targeted use
of military instruments, is likely the most effective approach to countering
Islamist terrorism. This threat appears to levy little requirement for
substantial military capability, beyond the retention of appropriate special-
forces and intelligence assets. The emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and
al-Sham (ISIS) does nothing to change this. That group’s military successes
have been achieved against the incompetent and overmatched, and its
brutality is ultimately self-limiting. It is instructive that, wherever the West
has employed even minimal military force against ISIS, the jihadists have
almost always been stopped in their tracks. While the cruelty of the group
cannot be overstated, ISIS does not represent a serious threat to the stable
regimes of the region, let alone to the United States.
 Towards a More Modest American Strategy | 69

A more recent addition to the panoply of alleged threats is that of endan-

gered access to the so-called ‘global commons’, and especially to sea lines of
communication (SLOCs). Who would be motivated to interfere with SLOCs
and under what circumstances seems unclear, however. To date, the only
risk to sea transport has been posed by small bands of pirates operating
mostly off the Horn of Africa and in Southeast Asian shipping lanes. Their
impact has been minimal, and is being effectively addressed through multi-
lateral counter-piracy patrols.
Often cited is the possibility that China would opt to attack maritime
commerce in the event of war with the United States. It is probably worth
noting, however, that in 2011, merchandise trade accounted for nearly half
of China’s GDP, as compared to a quarter of the United States’.20 Especially
in a world where most US energy needs can be met from sources in North
America, whose interests would be most threatened by a dramatic reduction
in traffic on the high seas? This scenario seems to fail both the probability
and severity tests.
The Korean Peninsula remains a locus of potential instability, and rep-
resents the most likely scenario for a large-scale land war. Commitments
to key allies, the US desire to maintain its role as a key security actor in the
Asia-Pacific region and the possibly disastrous consequences of an uncon-
trolled regime collapse in North Korea make this an important contingency
for which to prepare.
The United States is currently emerging, chastised, from the second of two
large, protracted stability operations. That the nation is unlikely to have the
appetite to undertake another such venture any time soon is only one reason
why it may not be wise to prepare for a third. Another is that there appear
to be few (if any) places in the world where the US might be drawn into
such a circumstance. A third reason is that failure to achieve US objectives
in either Iraq or Afghanistan may have only partly been a result of strategic
misjudgements and problematic planning in those specific cases; the inher-
ent difficulty of such operations, coupled with what is ultimately their low
salience, may make them no-win scenarios in general for the United States.21
Investing heavily to prepare for an unlikely eventuality wherein we in any
case are likely to fail despite all preparation would be foolish.
70 | David A. Shlapak

The United States has historically engaged in numerous smaller military

operations, ranging from humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and small
peacekeeping missions to undertakings such as the invasions of Grenada
and Panama. These have typically been viewed as ‘lesser included’ cases;
forces acquired and maintained for other missions have been temporarily
employed for these jobs. With the return of sustained downward pres-
sure on Pentagon spending, however, it may be prudent explicitly to seek
to retain the flexibility needed to undertake these smaller but sometimes
important tasks.
What about nuclear proliferation and, especially, the danger posed by
violent extremists coming into possession of a nuclear weapon? Firstly,
nations build nuclear weapons, not wild-eyed men hiding out in safe houses.
And the nations that build them do so by investing enormous resources and
often sacrificing much (‘eating grass’), making them exceedingly unlikely to
hand them over to wild-eyed men.22 Countries build them out of pressing
national need, not to be marketed in the global souk. Secondly, there are
known approaches to keeping nuclear weapons secure from unauthorised
use, transfer or theft, including permissive action links and personnel-
reliability programmes. The United States has and should continue to
cooperate with others in improving the safety and security of their nuclear
weapons, materials and technologies. This is not, however, mainly a job for
the military. What would be of greater consequence for the armed forces
would be the implosion of a country possessing nuclear weapons. The risk
of nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands is a powerful motivation to
remain committed to defending and stabilising the Korean Peninsula.
Taken all in all, where does this survey – as incomplete as it may be – leave
us? There appear to be five challenges that should drive DoD force planning:
the mandatory requirement to deter a nuclear attack on the United States
by a well-armed state adversary; defeating Chinese power projection across
water or, in true partnership with our NATO allies, countering Russian
power projection across land; defeating unconventional Iranian aggression
in the Persian Gulf; deterring Iranian use of nuclear weapons, should they
acquire them; and deterring a North Korean attack on South Korea and pre-
paring to contain ‘loose nukes’ in the event of a regime collapse in the North.
 Towards a More Modest American Strategy | 71

Maintaining the capability to fight two major wars simultaneously, as

the US currently aims to do, is unnecessary. Although it is impossible to
dismiss the possibility of opportunistic aggression, choosing to take on a
nation as powerful as the United States – not to mention one with such a
track record of responding vengefully when attacked – is a fateful choice for
any adversary’s leadership. While the thought that Washington is distracted
might be encouraging, it seems unlikely to be decisive in any minimally
prudent leader’s calculus. The operational military requirements of the
three major-war planning cases – Korea, the Western Pacific and the Baltic
states – are sufficiently non-overlapping, moreover, that being committed to
one should still leave in reserve substantial capability for
dealing with another.
It should also be recalled that the last time the United Nuclear use
States fought two truly major wars simultaneously – against
Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan – it did so through a
cannot be
degree of national mobilisation unparalleled either before dismissed
or since in its history. While a repeat of this level of com-
mitment may be too much to expect, the degree of national emergency that,
for instance, concurrent wars in Korea and Europe would represent should
suffice for the services to break their rotation schedules, and for Congress
to fully mobilise the reserve components. Finally, and above all else, a
leader contemplating attacking a truly vital interest of even a cornered and
exhausted United States must contemplate the implications of the several
thousand nuclear weapons at the president’s command. Their use cannot
be dismissed, especially in a situation where the United States, for whatever
reason, has no robust conventional options at its disposal.
In lieu of a two-war capability, then, the US should invest in a robust
nuclear posture, and a conventional force structure adequate to deal with
any of the three potential major wars, plus an additional increment to
provide a small but flexible and responsive strategic reserve beyond those
needed for the challenges above.23
It is notable that the core non-nuclear planning scenarios described
above are fundamentally defensive; they are about defeating an adversary’s
attempt to project power beyond its borders, as opposed to invading its
 72 | David A. Shlapak

homeland.24 This is important because, simply put, defence is easier than

offence. Defeating power projection involves countering an adversary who
has to come to you to achieve its objectives, stretching its logistics lines,
exposing its forces and typically requiring that it operate along disad-
vantageous external lines of communication. The clearest example of this
vulnerability is amphibious warfare, wherein the attacker must ultimately
cross the visual horizon, subjecting itself to the fire of every unsuppressed
weapon within range, almost regardless of the state of the defender’s sur-
veillance, command and control. There are very good reasons why attacks
from the sea are among the rarest and riskiest military operations.
US war-fighting concepts should exploit this advantage by eschewing,
where possible, complex and dangerous offensive oper-
ations in favour of more defensively oriented postures.
The prospect Defeating Chinese power projection need not involve
large-scale attacks against targets on the mainland, as
of defeat envisioned in the Air–Sea Battle concept enjoying cur-
should deter rency within the Pentagon. Instead, attack submarines,
land-based anti-ship missiles (ASMs), fast, stealthy, mis-
sile-armed patrol boats, and long-range, air-launched ASMs could be used
to create lethal maritime ‘kill boxes’ for Chinese warships and, if desired,
Chinese commerce. Mobile surface-to-air defences and fighters shifting
among small, dispersed bases would contest People’s Liberation Army
air operations. Absent dramatic improvements in the effectiveness of anti-
missile defences, it will be difficult to prevent China’s large inventory of
ballistic missiles from inflicting considerable damage on a wide range of
targets. However, single-use missiles are a very expensive way to deliver
high explosives, and even China’s magazine is of finite size. To the extent
that China cannot achieve its objectives via punitive strikes alone, a concept
based on dispersed defence offers a good probability of defeating an attack;
the prospect of such a defeat should serve to deter one.25
Similarly, the Iranian threat is not that of a large-scale land invasion, but
an attempt to project power across or upon the water. Aircraft carriers and
heavy brigade combat teams would likely prove far less useful than missile
defences, mine-warfare vessels, special forces and a fairly modest strike
 Towards a More Modest American Strategy | 73

capacity that could be provided in any number of ways.26 The United States
should also seek to help its regional friends improve their defensive capa-
bilities in appropriate ways.
The European and North Korean contingencies are more classic, big
joint operations. On the Korean Peninsula, the US and South Korea have
been planning for a resumption of hostilities since 1953. However, even
this picture is changing, as North Korea’s conventional military capabili-
ties grow increasingly decrepit and the likelihood of a traditional invasion
scenario decreases. Meanwhile, Pyongyang is developing nuclear weapons,
continuing to field an impressive arsenal of chemical arms, and threatening
to rain destruction on Seoul from its artillery concentration on the Kaesong
Heights. In addition to continuing to prepare for the possibility, however
remote, of a North Korean invasion, US and South Korean planners must
also consider how to rapidly eliminate the artillery threat to Seoul, neu-
tralise the North’s chemical-weapons stockpile and secure nuclear weapons
and materials before they can escape the country.
Under some circumstances, some of these missions might prove to be
simply too hard. For example, in the event of a sudden collapse of central
control in the North, it just may not be possible to move enough US or South
Korean troops far enough, fast enough, to secure nuclear-weapons sites any
distance from the demilitarised zone. The sheer number of armed person-
nel in the North, which, in addition to its huge active force, has about 6.5
million reserve and paramilitary troops,27 may prevent rapid pacification of
the country, if it does not preclude cross-border operations in the first place.
In general, the requirements for dealing with the multitude of possible sce-
narios and missions that could be encountered on the Korean Peninsula in
the coming years are poorly understood and merit substantial further study.
A new strategy should also entail a reconsideration of America’s alli-
ance relationships, which have come to be seen by many within the defence
establishment as ends in themselves. They are not. Alliances are instru-
ments through which nations seek to manage common security challenges;
as those problems change, so should the alliances evolve.28
America’s NATO allies, as discussed above, must assume significant
responsibility for dealing with the emerging Russian challenge to the
74 | David A. Shlapak

European security order, but an even thornier example can be found in

the Western Pacific. How much risk of a confrontation with China over the
Senkaku/Diaoyu islands should the US assume in order to maintain its rela-
tionship with Japan? Is it actually in America’s interests to be dragged into a
war with another nuclear-armed great power over the issue of who should
administer a group of uninhabited rocks over 6,000 miles from the US West
Coast? More precisely, do the benefits that accrue from the alliance, mul-
tiplied by the probability that Japan would wreck the relationship over an
American disavowal of responsibility for defending the Senkakus – after
all, who needs whom more? Japan, next door to a powerful China and a
dangerously erratic North Korea, or the United States, on the other side
of the Pacific? – exceed the potential costs of a conflict with China over the
islands, times the likelihood of such a clash? No answer is proposed here.
The point is that, if the public record is an accurate guide, the question does
not appear to have been seriously debated before the US committed itself
to supporting Japan in a clash with China over these essentially worthless
islets. It should have been.

* * *

If any of these propositions have merit, there would be substantial impli-

cations for the size and configuration of the US military, as well as for the
division of labour among the US armed forces, and between the DoD and
the other branches of government. Understanding precisely what these
should be will require a great deal of careful analysis, and speculating
about what the results might be would be both premature and distract-
ing. What is important is to recognise the need for a broad debate about
America’s purpose and intentions in the world – about the actual threats
to the nation’s security, and the proper responses to them. Only after that
discussion has been had will it be useful to contemplate budgets, brigades,
wings and strike groups.
The strategy America needs is one that is shaped by the country’s legiti-
mate security challenges, not internal Pentagon politics. It recognises that
defence spending is a burden on the nation, and that the nation feels itself
 Towards a More Modest American Strategy | 75

at this moment overburdened. US strategy should focus on five primary

problems – the absolute need to deter a nuclear attack on the homeland
and a core of four optional scenarios – rather than attempting to support
a hollow doctrine of American exceptionalism or sustain self-proclaimed
leadership that has brought benefits neither to the world nor to ordinary
Americans. It is a more modest strategy serving a more modest country
with more modest, reasonable and realistic ambitions. The United States
needs a strategy that addresses the world it faces as that world actually is,
not one driven by shibboleths that are obsolete, if indeed they ever held
true. Clinging onto those illusions, far from ensuring American security,
will endanger it.

Notes
1
John Mearsheimer defines a ‘great
power’ as a state having ‘sufficient
military assets to put up a serious
fight in an all-out conventional war
against the most powerful state in the
world’ and also possessing ‘a nuclear
4
deterrent that can survive a nuclear
strike against it’. John Mearsheimer,
5
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics
(New York: W.W. Norton & Sons,
2001), p. 5.
2
George W. Bush, address to joint ses-
sion of Congress, Washington DC,
20 September 2001, http://www.
washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/
specials/attacked/transcripts/bushad-
dress_092001.html.
3
As a point of comparison, the total
2014 fiscal-year federal budget pro-
posal submitted by President Obama
totals a little under $3.8 trillion. The
to-date costs of the wars are roughly
$2trn. Linda J. Bilmes, The Financial
Legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan: How
Wartime Spending Decisions Will
Constrain Future National Security
Budgets, Faculty Research Working
Paper RWP13-006, Harvard Kennedy
School, March 2013, http://research.
hks.harvard.edu/publications/getFile.
aspx?Id=923.
See http://www.defense.gov/news/
casualty.pdf.
The sustained economic expansion
of the 1990s came as defence spend-
ing as a proportion of GDP dropped
every year, to a low of roughly 3% in
fiscal years 1999, 2000 and 2001. Had
defence spending been maintained at
that level, the DoD’s fiscal-year-2012
budget would have been roughly $411
billion, instead of nearly $692bn. All
numbers are constant fiscal-year-2013
dollars, updated from fiscal-year-2011
dollars in Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)
Military Expenditure Database,
2013, http://www.sipri.org/research/
armaments/milex/milex_database/
milex_database.
76 | David A. Shlapak
6
Dylan Matthews, ‘Research Desk:
Will Defense Cuts Harm the
Economy?’, Washington Post, http://
www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/
wonkblog/post/research-desk-
what-does-defense-spending-
do-for-the-economy/2011/10/26/
gIQANsiQJM_blog.html.
7
‘The U.S. Spends More on Defense
Than the Next Eight Countries
Combined’, Peterson Foundation,
13 April 2014, http://pgpf.org/Chart-
13
Archive/0053_defense-comparison.
8
DoD, ‘Sustaining U.S. Global
Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century
Defense’, January 2012, http://www.
defense.gov/news/defense_strategic_
guidance.pdf.
14
9
Mark Halperin, ‘Romney VFW
Excerpts’, Time, 24 July 2012, http://
thepage.time.com/2012/07/24/
romney-vfw-excerpts.
10
The concept of ‘military superior-
ity’, while often mentioned, is rarely
(if ever) usefully defined. Obama’s
15
foreword to the 2012 defence guid-
ance says that the US will ‘keep [its]
Armed Forces the best-trained, best-
led, best-equipped fighting force in
history’, but that simply defines one
context-free superlative in terms of
another. Coming at it from the other
direction, an interesting exercise
might be to explore how much worse
the US military could become while
remaining ‘the best-trained, best-led,
best-equipped fighting force in his-
16
tory’. Who is in second place?
11
DoD, ‘Sustaining U.S. Global
Leadership’, p. 1.
12
Cyber crime – breaking into
information systems to steal data,
including trade secrets or money
stored as ones and zeros – is as
different from disrupting ‘access to
the global commons’ as Somali piracy
is from unrestricted U-boat warfare.
Similarly, cyber espionage is just that:
the world’s second-oldest profession
translated into a new medium.
While the armed forces may have
legitimate roles in addressing piracy
and cyber mischief, those missions
certainly don’t require global military
supremacy.
Norton A. Schwartz, statement before
the House Committee on Armed
Services, 2 November 2011, p. 3, http://
armedservices.house.gov/index.cfm/
files/serve?File_id=18235368-5F93-
4BF3-8A83-5B2D9E19336F.
Jonathan W. Greenert, statement
before the House Committee on
Armed Services, 2 November
2011, p. 5, http://armedservices.
house.gov/index.cfm/files/
serve?File_id=57509469-D31E-48AC-
9C95-0C4C2BE42DA0.
James F. Amos, statement before the
House Committee on Armed Services,
2 November 2011, p. 7, http://armed-
services.house.gov/index.cfm/files/
serve?File_id=08EAF78F-203B-4804-
AD15-8593B91A86E2; Raymond T.
Odierno, statement before the House
Committee on Armed Services, 2
November 2011, pp. 3–4, http://armed-
services.house.gov/index.cfm/files/
serve?File_id=124F067D-3A7E-47F4-
BD6F-611270ABC890.
Note that the discussion here presup-
poses the goal of protecting our allies
and interests from Chinese aggres-
sion, which is more consistent with
the historical American approach
to regional security than vague and
 Towards a More Modest American Strategy | 77
vapid commitments to an undefined
‘superiority’.
17
Focusing on Chinese attempts to
project power across water fits three
key facts. Firstly, getting into a land
war against China in Asia is a bad
idea. Secondly, China does not share
a land border with any US treaty ally,
making a land war against China
in Asia a totally optional bad idea.
Finally, China’s neighbours are not
unaware of who lives next door;
22
India, North Korea, Russia, Pakistan,
Vietnam and Myanmar all rank
among the 13 largest militaries in the
world. While the US might be called
upon to provide air and maritime sup-
port, the capabilities called for in those
domains would be broadly similar to
23
those needed to deal with any major
Chinese attempt to project power
away from land.
18
The four are Germany, France, the UK
and Italy. Canada is not far behind.
See ‘GDP (current US$)’, World Bank,
2013, http://data.worldbank.org/indi-
24
cator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD.
19
On the growing prospects for North
American energy independence, see,
for example, Edward L. Morse et al.,
‘Energy 2020: Independence Day’, Citi
GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions,
February 2013, http://www.imd.
org/uupload/webToolWWW/5345/
Document/Citi_ENERGY%202020_
25
Independence%20Day_2013-Feb.pdf.
20
‘Exports of Goods and Services (% of
GDP)’, World Bank, 2013, http://data.
worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.
GNFS.ZS.
21
As a Stimson Center panel of experts
concluded, instability and civil conflicts
should be understood to ‘pose only
indirect threats to the United States,
threats to be managed rather than
resolved through protracted military
involvement’. Stimson Center, ‘A
New US Defense Strategy for a New
Era: Military Superiority, Agility,
and Efficiency – A Summary of the
Findings of the Defense Advisory
Committee’, November 2012, p. 3,
http://www.stimson.org/images/
uploads/research-pdfs/A_New_US_
Defense_Strategy_for_a_New_Era.pdf.
Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto famously declared that
Pakistan would ‘eat grass’, if nec-
essary, to build nuclear weapons,
should India build its own. See Patrick
Keatley, ‘The Brown Bomb’, Guardian,
11 March 1965.
Some might seek to characterise
this as similar to what is called a
‘win–hold–win’ posture, but such a
phrasing implies an acceptance of
the two-wars framework, which this
analysis largely rejects as a basis for
planning.
In fact, except perhaps for a counter-
offensive phase of some future Korean
war, there appears to be no demand for
the ability to occupy a hostile country
and take down its regime. And, in that
case, the US would benefit from having
its South Korean ally – owner of the
world’s sixth-largest army – to do
much of the heavy lifting.
We should also seek to make our
regional friends and allies better able
to engage in this species of warfare,
through arms sales, training and
frequent exercises. As in Cold War
Europe, the countries directly in the
line of fire must play a major role in
their own forward defence.
78 | David A. Shlapak
26
While feasible missile defences will
likely be of limited value against an arse-
nal as large and sophisticated as China’s,
they could prove very useful against
countries like Iran and North Korea,
whose inventories will be smaller and
consist of less advanced weapons.
27
IISS, The Military Balance 2015
(Abingdon: Routledge for the IISS,
2015), p. 261.
28
To paraphrase Lord Palmerston’s
famous injunction, the US has no
permanent friends and no permanent
enemies; just enduring interests.