thedrifter
10-11-05, 07:00 PM
October 17, 2005
Analyst: No crystal ball for threats facing U.S.
By Vince Crawley
Times staff writer
As the Pentagon continues with its Quadrennial Defense Review, a bipartisan congressional panel is independently gathering data on threats faced by the United States.
But national security analyst Anthony Cordesman, who was called to testify before the panel, warned that threat assessments are, by their nature, short-sighted and quickly overcome by events.
In the most dangerous Middle Eastern hot spots, Cordesman said, conventional military capability is nearly meaningless compared to cultural confrontations and charismatic leaders of radical, nongovernment movements.
“We have a track record of being wrong in virtually every defense exercise we’ve been in since Pearl Harbor,” Cordesman told the House Armed Services Committee’s Defense Threat Review Panel on Sept. 28. A former U.S. intelligence officer in Vietnam, Cordesman is with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and frequently travels to military trouble spots around the globe.
The QDR is ordered by Congress and conducted every four years. The study is undertaken by the Pentagon and intended to become a strategic road map for how military forces will be sized and arranged around the world.
The House panel in September heard testimony about regional threats from more than a dozen independent analysts. According to co-chairwoman Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., the panel is taking “a close look at both threats that immediately threaten our nation” and “threats that may require the deployment of U.S. military assets over the next 20 years.”
The House Armed Services Committee is gathering the information because Congress ultimately is responsible for funding the military and authorizing how that money will be spent.
But Cordesman said the panel is asking the wrong questions.
“I do not believe that military forces and defense expenditures should be sized around specific threat analyses,” he said. “As a superpower, we simply cannot answer the question of how much is enough by gazing into a crystal ball or consulting panels of analytic shamans.”
Threat assessments had some usefulness during the Cold War to analyze “worst-case” threats such as a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, a NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict or a resumption of war on the Korean Peninsula, Cordesman said. But much of the data of those threat studies turned out to be wrong and ended up focusing the U.S. military too narrowly on its war-fighting mission, he said.
The war-fighting focus of most military studies has “undercut their value because they did not address what was, in fact, the need — to focus on what would most deter a conflict while serving U.S. strategic interests.”
National security strategy also encompasses many parts of the federal government, not just the Defense Department, he said.
The current conflict described as a “war on terrorism” is actually a much broader struggle that has little to do with the conventional military power, Cordesman said. The struggle includes a “clash with Islam and the Middle East over the role of religion,” as well as “massive forces of social change,” such as the growth of urban populations in general, and in the youth population in particular, in many nations run by governments that are unable to respond to economic pressures, he said.
Rather than shaping the military to meet a range of predicted threats, a superpower such as the United States needs a large, flexible force constantly able to “assess possible changes in mission,” Cordesman said.
Recent U.S. military history is awash with well-studied strategic plans that fell apart when put to into action, he said.
“We mischaracterized the threat in Vietnam and initially disregarded the Sino-Soviet split,” he said. “We did not predict the risks in Lebanon, Haiti and Somalia. We are the country that did not predict the threat Iraq would be to Kuwait or its level of proliferation.”
The United States “exaggerated the probable effectiveness of the Iraqi army before the [1991 Persian] Gulf War,” Cordesman said. “We failed to accurately predict 9/11 and the threat posed by Islamic extremism. We blundered into the Iraq war with the wrong threat analysis of the reasons for going to war.”
And, he said, the U.S. government “totally failed to understand the importance of stability operations.”
Cordesman is not opposed to QDR-style studies, but said, “Given our track record … a little modesty seems necessary.”
Ellie
Analyst: No crystal ball for threats facing U.S.
By Vince Crawley
Times staff writer
As the Pentagon continues with its Quadrennial Defense Review, a bipartisan congressional panel is independently gathering data on threats faced by the United States.
But national security analyst Anthony Cordesman, who was called to testify before the panel, warned that threat assessments are, by their nature, short-sighted and quickly overcome by events.
In the most dangerous Middle Eastern hot spots, Cordesman said, conventional military capability is nearly meaningless compared to cultural confrontations and charismatic leaders of radical, nongovernment movements.
“We have a track record of being wrong in virtually every defense exercise we’ve been in since Pearl Harbor,” Cordesman told the House Armed Services Committee’s Defense Threat Review Panel on Sept. 28. A former U.S. intelligence officer in Vietnam, Cordesman is with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and frequently travels to military trouble spots around the globe.
The QDR is ordered by Congress and conducted every four years. The study is undertaken by the Pentagon and intended to become a strategic road map for how military forces will be sized and arranged around the world.
The House panel in September heard testimony about regional threats from more than a dozen independent analysts. According to co-chairwoman Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., the panel is taking “a close look at both threats that immediately threaten our nation” and “threats that may require the deployment of U.S. military assets over the next 20 years.”
The House Armed Services Committee is gathering the information because Congress ultimately is responsible for funding the military and authorizing how that money will be spent.
But Cordesman said the panel is asking the wrong questions.
“I do not believe that military forces and defense expenditures should be sized around specific threat analyses,” he said. “As a superpower, we simply cannot answer the question of how much is enough by gazing into a crystal ball or consulting panels of analytic shamans.”
Threat assessments had some usefulness during the Cold War to analyze “worst-case” threats such as a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, a NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict or a resumption of war on the Korean Peninsula, Cordesman said. But much of the data of those threat studies turned out to be wrong and ended up focusing the U.S. military too narrowly on its war-fighting mission, he said.
The war-fighting focus of most military studies has “undercut their value because they did not address what was, in fact, the need — to focus on what would most deter a conflict while serving U.S. strategic interests.”
National security strategy also encompasses many parts of the federal government, not just the Defense Department, he said.
The current conflict described as a “war on terrorism” is actually a much broader struggle that has little to do with the conventional military power, Cordesman said. The struggle includes a “clash with Islam and the Middle East over the role of religion,” as well as “massive forces of social change,” such as the growth of urban populations in general, and in the youth population in particular, in many nations run by governments that are unable to respond to economic pressures, he said.
Rather than shaping the military to meet a range of predicted threats, a superpower such as the United States needs a large, flexible force constantly able to “assess possible changes in mission,” Cordesman said.
Recent U.S. military history is awash with well-studied strategic plans that fell apart when put to into action, he said.
“We mischaracterized the threat in Vietnam and initially disregarded the Sino-Soviet split,” he said. “We did not predict the risks in Lebanon, Haiti and Somalia. We are the country that did not predict the threat Iraq would be to Kuwait or its level of proliferation.”
The United States “exaggerated the probable effectiveness of the Iraqi army before the [1991 Persian] Gulf War,” Cordesman said. “We failed to accurately predict 9/11 and the threat posed by Islamic extremism. We blundered into the Iraq war with the wrong threat analysis of the reasons for going to war.”
And, he said, the U.S. government “totally failed to understand the importance of stability operations.”
Cordesman is not opposed to QDR-style studies, but said, “Given our track record … a little modesty seems necessary.”
Ellie