What They Are Saying: U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates
FrontLines - February 2009
A column devoted to what our partners and others in the field
of foreign assistance are saying about development.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates has called for a more balanced strategy to meet the national security needs of the country. In an article that appeared in Foreign Affairs, January/February 2009—A Balanced Strategy—he argues for a better focus on today’s unconventional conflicts to better prepare us for tomorrow. His advice has significant implications for the development mission of this country and for USAID in particular. Excerpts from the article follow.
The defining principle of the Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy is balance. The United States cannot expect to eliminate national security risks through higher defense budgets, to do everything
and buy everything. The Department of Defense must set priorities and consider inescapable tradeoffs and opportunity costs….
What is dubbed the war on terror is, in grim reality, a prolonged, worldwide irregular
campaign—a struggle between the forces of violent extremism and those of moderation.
Direct military force will continue to play a role in the long-term effort against terrorists and other extremists.
But over the long term, the United States cannot kill or capture its way to victory.
Where possible, what the military calls kinetic [violent, or force-on-force] operations should be subordinated to measures aimed at promoting better governance, economic programs that spur development,
and efforts to address the grievances among the discontented,
from whom the terrorists recruit. It will take the patient accumulation of quiet successes over a long time to discredit and defeat extremist movements and their ideologies.
The United States is unlikely to repeat another Iraq or Afghanistan—that is, forced regime change followed by nation building under fire—anytime soon. But that does not mean it may not face similar
challenges in a variety of locales.
Where possible, U.S. strategy
is to employ indirect approaches—primarily through building the capacity of partner governments and their security forces—to prevent festering problems
from turning into crises that require costly and controversial
direct military intervention.
In this kind of effort, the capabilities
of the United States’ allies and partners may be as important as its own, and building their capacity is arguably as important as, if not more so, than the fighting
the United States does itself.
The recent past vividly demonstrated
the consequences of failing to address adequately the dangers posed by insurgencies and failing states. Terrorist networks
can find sanctuary within the borders of a weak nation and strength within the chaos of social breakdown. A nuclear-armed state could collapse into chaos and criminality. The most likely catastrophic threats to the U.S. homeland—for example, that of a U.S. city being poisoned
or reduced to rubble by a terrorist attack—are more likely to emanate from failing states than from aggressor states….
The military and civilian elements
of the United States’ national security apparatus have responded unevenly and have grown increasingly out of balance.
The problem is not will; it is capacity. In many ways, the country’s
national security capabilities are still coping with the consequences
of the 1990s, when, with the complicity of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, key instruments
of U.S. power abroad were reduced or allowed to wither on the bureaucratic vine.
The State Department froze the hiring of new Foreign Service Officers. The U.S. Agency for International Development dropped from a high of having 15,000 permanent
staff members during the Vietnam War to having less than 3,000 today. And then there was the U.S. Information Agency, whose directors once included the likes of Edward R. Murrow. It was split into pieces and folded into a corner of the State Department.
Since 9/11, and through the efforts first of Secretary of State Colin Powell and now of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the State Department has made a comeback. Foreign Service Officers are being hired again, and foreign affairs spending
has about doubled since President Bush took office.
Yet even with a better-funded State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development, future military commanders will not be able to rid themselves of the tasks of maintaining security and stability.
To truly achieve victory as Clausewitz defined it—to attain a political objective—the United States needs a military whose ability to kick down the door is matched by its ability to clean up the mess and even rebuild the house afterward.
Given these realities, the military
has made some impressive strides in recent years. Special operations have received steep increases in funding and personnel.
The Air Force has created a new air advisory program and a new career track for unmanned aerial operations. The Navy has set up a new expeditionary combat command and brought back its riverine units. New counterinsurgency and army operations manuals, plus a new maritime strategy, have incorporated the lessons of recent years in service doctrine.
“Train and equip” programs allow for quicker improvements in the security capacity of partner
nations. And various initiatives
are under way that will better
integrate and coordinate U.S. military efforts with civilian agencies as well as engage the expertise of the private sector, including nongovernmental organizations and academia…
But no one should ever neglect the psychological, cultural,
political, and human dimensions of warfare. War is inevitably tragic, inefficient, and uncertain, and it is important
to be skeptical of systems analyses, computer models, game theories, or doctrines that suggest otherwise.
We should look askance at idealistic, triumphalist, or ethnocentric
notions of future conflict that aspire to transcend the immutable principles and ugly realities of war, that imagine it is possible to cow, shock, or awe an enemy into submission, instead of tracking enemies down hilltop by hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block. As General William Tecumseh Sherman said, “Every attempt to make
war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.”
Repeatedly over the last
century, Americans averted their eyes in the belief that events in remote places around the world need not engage the United States. How could the assassination of an Austrian archduke in the unknown Bosnia and Herzegovina affect Americans, or the annexation of a little patch of ground called Sudetenland, or a French defeat in a place called Dien Bien Phu, or the return of an obscure cleric to Tehran, or the radicalization of a Saudi construction tycoon’s son?
In world affairs, “what seems to work best,” the historian
Donald Kagan wrote in his book On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace, “…is the possession by those states who wish to preserve the peace of the preponderant
power and of the will to accept the burdens and responsibilities required to achieve that purpose.” I believe the United States’ National Defense Strategy provides a balanced approach to meeting those responsibilities
and preserving the United States’ freedom, prosperity,
and security in the years ahead.
Reprinted with the permission
of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Robert Michael Gates took office on Dec. 18, 2006 as the 22nd U. S. Secretary of Defense. Prior to this, Gates served for 26 years
in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council. Under President George H. W. Bush, he served as Director of Central Intelligence. On Dec. 1, 2008, President-elect Barack Obama announced his intention to have Gates remain as Secretary of Defense
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