Over the course of our nation’s relatively brief history, Americans have risen to the occasion to defeat our enemies and protect our freedoms. Whether it was those brave souls parachuting into Normandy on D-Day or those in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, American sacrifice serves as a powerful example of what can be accomplished when we dedicate the best of ourselves to the greatest good.
Global strategic conditions are rapidly evolving, and so too is the necessity of preparing for wars that we neither want nor seek. Conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza serve as a reminder of this challenge, as well as a stark warning that the American military must restructure in order to grapple with the realities of the world today.
In recent history, the United States has attempted to build a force and strategy capable of addressing conflicts on multiple fronts, learning critical lessons along the way. Vietnam proved that even what is perceived to be a “small war” requires a significant force, dispelling the Johnson administration’s belief that the military of the time could fight two wars simultaneously in Europe and the Pacific, as well as a smaller conflict in the third world. Under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, we reduced our force structure by thirty percent from its 1990 levels.
A Bottom Up Review from the Clinton administration read, in part, that “one of the central factors in our analysis was the judgment that the United States must field forces capable, in concert with its allies, of fighting and winning two major regional conflicts that occur nearly simultaneously.” Although the report does acknowledge that strategic force reductions could be made and still maintain this capability, then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin qualified it by adding that a series of “critical force enhancements to improve our strategic mobility and strengthen our early-arriving antiarmor capability” should be made.
Developing a national defense structure capable of a multi-front war continued to morph under George W. Bush’s administration, which aimed to build a force which was capable of deterring hostilities in four key regions at any given time. Of those four regions, the goal was to have a force prepared to win swiftly in two of those regions, and of those two, to win decisively in one region.
Since the Obama administration, the national security community consensus has been that China has become the new “pacing threat,” one whose military has rapidly expanded in both size and quality. Accordingly, both the Trump and Biden administrations moved to refocus and reinforce our military preparedness to be effective in a potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine reinforced the theory that the military threat out of Russia had not disappeared. Events in the Middle East, including a resurgent terrorist threat, the possibility of broader regional conflict stemming from the war in Gaza, and escalating tensions with Iran, continue to attract both our strategic interests and our military capabilities. Iran’s recent provocations, including direct strikes on Israel and maritime disruptions, underscore its growing regional assertiveness, and highlight the necessity of recent U.S. military action to prevent its continued progress toward nuclear weapons capability and destabilizing global security.
While the doctrine and the types of adversaries we face have slowly evolved over time, the underlying logic has remained consistent: we must have the capability to deter and defeat multiple threats simultaneously. Still, we continue to ask our military to achieve this increasingly complex goal with an ever diminishing set of resources telling leadership to do more with less.
In my 2021 book, The Ever Shrinking Fighting Force, I argued that the goal of deterring our adversaries from starting a war is only achievable if we actually have the capabilities to take them on. Compared to the past, we are spending way more for a smaller force. We need to get a bigger bang for our buck while reconfiguring our military to deal with an increasingly tangled threat environment. That means we need to prepare and equip our forces for something similar to a two-theater war construct – ready to fight multiple conflicts simultaneously.
Will this require a larger budget allocation for defense? Absolutely. Will it mean a bigger force? Unquestionably. Some of it can be offset through force re-configuration, an expanded reliance on emerging technology, and a vigorous reduction of the Pentagon’s increasingly large overhead. But in order to be truly prepared, we will need a larger Navy for the Pacific, a more capable Army for Europe, an Air Force with longer legs and greater strategic airlift to support and go on the offensive, and a Marine Corps that is a combined-arms force ready for any contingency.
Simply put, if we don’t rework and reconfigure our military to handle multiple conflicts, we’ll be perennially playing catch-up, putting our war fighters into unwinnable situations, and our nation’s security will suffer.
Major General Arnold L. Punaro (USMC, ret.) is the Chief Executive Officer of The Punaro Group and a nationally recognized expert in defense, national security, and government reform. He served for 24 years in the U.S. Senate, including as Staff Director of the Senate Armed Services Committee. His most recent book is entitled, “IF CONFIRMED: An Insider’s View of the National Security Confirmation Process”.
This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.
