POSTURE REVIEW EYES ENGAGEMENT, RESPONSE AND INTERAGENCY ISSUES
The upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review’s reassessment of America’s global military footprint will emphasize building ties with foreign forces, enabling rapid responses to crises and bolstering interagency involvement in the global defense posture, according to a senior defense official.
The reassessment is expected to draw on insights from combatant commanders, recent lessons learned and assessments of future threats, the official said last week.
The Bush administration’s 2001 QDR led to the first major, formal, post-Cold War shift in the U.S. global posture. In 2004, a related Pentagon report, which identified overseas bases to be closed or consolidated, called for redeploying about 70,000 troops, plus 100,000 family members and civilian workers from Europe and Asia. It also created what the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments later dubbed “a new type of global expeditionary posture that supports rapid U.S. power projection operations, and one specifically designed to maximize U.S. global freedom of action.”
Now the Obama administration is poised to take a fresh look at that posture.
“Many of the COCOMs have come forward with insights about where we need to go,” the official said. “And while many of the changes envisioned still seem to make sense, there are some that the COCOMs have come back and said, ‘Maybe we want to rethink this a little bit’ in light of the recent years of experience. And of course, we want to make sure that the posture reflects the strategy of the new administration, going forward.”
The Defense Department will look at exactly where forces are stationed on a permanent and conditional basis, where DOD is investing in infrastructure and where DOD is investing in terms of regular cooperative work with allied partners, according to the official.
The global defense posture is a “critical manifestation” of the department’s strategy, the official added.
The review will not throw out the posture “wholesale,” the official said, but rather will seek to make adjustments based on lessons learned over the last several years and challenges anticipated for the future.
Pentagon leaders want a posture that enables forces to respond as rapidly as possible when needed, the official said. Also, the global defense posture study will aim to find ways to build on the DOD posture and make it more of an interagency posture, perhaps “a lot more” so, the official added.
InsideDefense.com has reported the new QDR will mull where, and in what formations, U.S. forces should be positioned worldwide to implement persistent presence, an idea centered on having forward-deployed American forces work with foreign militaries to prevent wars and bolster security in fragile countries (Inside the Pentagon, April 9, p22).
Retired Gen. James Jones, who was U.S. European Command’s leader and NATO’s top commander from 2003 to 2006 and has since become President Obama’s national security adviser, has in recent years voiced concerns about the need to preserve overseas bases to foster ties with allies. When Defense Secretary Robert Gates slowed the departure of Army forces from Europe in 2007, Jones cheered the decision.
“To me, forward basing is extremely important,” the general told ITP in an interview at the time, noting forward basing is not only a privilege, but also a way to prevent wars, stay engaged in parts of the world and promote peace.
“At the end of the day, I thought we cut too deeply into the Army forces in particular,” Jones recounted in the 2007 interview. “What was agreed upon to do in Eastern Europe started getting softer in terms of it being a full-up rotational brigade,” he said. There were other discussions about curtailing the presence of special forces and finally the general concept of forward basing, he said.
In another interview with ITP last fall, shortly before he was named national security adviser, Jones said the new administration must ensure U.S. combatant commanders receive adequate resources to support essential, global engagement activities that have faced budget challenges in wartime (ITP, Nov. 24, 2008 p1).
Supporting engagement activities has been hard for EUCOM due to the cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the minutes from a secret-level meeting of EUCOM advisers conducted last July in Garmisch, Germany. The meeting focused on ways EUCOM could successfully execute its mission despite “diminishing resources” and competing global force requirements for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that have “cut EUCOM’s ability to plan for and build partner capacity,” according to the document.
Such problems must be fixed, Jones argued in the interview. “So if a commander says, ‘I no longer have enough money to execute the engagement plan,’ recognizing that EUCOM just lost Africa in terms of its territorial engagement responsibilities -- if in fact the budget has also been overly adjusted, then I would say the EUCOM commander should be beating on the table and say ‘I don’t have enough to do my job,’” Jones told ITP. “And if that’s the case, they should adjust it because it’s really important.”
In an article published last fall in Washington Quarterly, Pentagon policy chief Michèle Flournoy and her assistant Shawn Brimley highlighted some of the key questions for the upcoming posture review.
“For example, how should the need to contain and counter growing Iranian influence in the Persian Gulf shape U.S. military posture in the Middle East region?” they wrote. “Is a more distributed global posture needed to support a sustained campaign against violent extremism over the coming decades? What kind of posture would best support a long-term U.S. commitment to help build the security capacities of key allies and partners in critical regions? Answers to these questions will help the Army and Marine Corps decide whether and how to shape their forces for long-term training and advisory missions in pre- or post-conflict environments.”
Such answers will also help the Air Force and Navy prioritize the relative importance of forward presence in critical regions versus the ability to project power over long ranges from the United States, the authors noted.
“Although many of the changes wrought by the Bush administration may still make sense, it is important that the next administration review additional ones in light of changed realities,” the article says. -- Christopher J. Castelli
PENTAGON-25-15-8