Painful--Possibly Necessary--Defense Cuts on the Way

Monday should be a bombshell day here in our nation's capital, when Secretary of Defense Gates bursts forth with his very well-gagged deliberations on how to make significant trades in the defense budget. I won't call them cuts, because they aren't...the defense budget is slated to rise in 2010. Any discussion among folks on this side of the aisle simply must acknowledge this fact--and the intellectual vacuity of referring to a smaller increase as a decrease.

That said, Gates is taking on quite a task. He'll gore the oxes of some of the biggest programs out there, he'll annoy some of the most powerful legislators there are, and he'll piss the armed services off like nobodies business. Guess what--that's his job, and that's one of the truly beautiful things about civilian control of the military. That he is gracefully transitioning from a superb Defense Secretary under a Republican to a stalwart Defense Secretary under a Democrat is a tribute to the man's integrity.

That said, I think he's gone a little over the edge in his devotion to "irregular" or "hybrid" warfare. For those of you who don't spend your workdays reading defense journals (or writing for them), these terms are buzz-phrases of note in the defense vernacular. Referring basically to stuff that isn't included in the old-fashioned "killing people and wrecking things" approach to military hardware and strategy (you know, ships, tanks, bombers, missiles, etc), hybrid or irregular warfare is a continuum that seeks to influence the behavior of pre-hostiles through engagement and capacity building, contain the impact of insurgent efforts with an increased adherence to the fashionable dictates of counter-insurgency theory, all the while maintaining sufficient kinetic force to shape, deter, and defend against traditional threats.

Gates' thinking is very much in line with a lot of the strategic work we did in the Navy at the end of my career. Secretary Gates has been very supportive of the Navy's new strategy, but it is in how that strategy (or one like it) gets carried out that I differ with him. I'm not saying that hybrid/irregular warfare is a lesser-included offense in old-fashioned Naval warfare; to do so would ignore the reality that there are tactics, equipment, and strategies involved in low-end conflict and shaping that are simply not useful in kinetic warfare. But to do as Gates is doing by culling out hybrid warfare into a protected zone of its own, worthy of investment separate and apart from the other missions and contingencies the Services plan for--strikes me as short-sited in an era in which competition for influence across the globe has begun anew, this time with a new band of players and much different rules.

Rather than looking at the service budgets as potential bill-payers for ramping up investment in irregular capabilities, we should be assessing service programs for their extensibility and flexibility, the degree to which they are useful in both hard-core kinetic warfare and also low-end irregular warfare. Those that provide benefit across the spectrum would occupy a privileged place; those that service only one end would be looked at with circumspection (though not necessarily ignored, as there are capabilities at both ends of the spectrum that are truly critical to national defense).

I wish Mr. Gates much luck in his effort. I caution him not to get so carried away with fighting the last war that he leaves us unprepared to fight the next.