When considering the next National Security Strategy, policymakers need to address the means by which strategy will be implemented. More specifically, how should force be employed to achieve national security objectives in the twenty-first century? It is a question that ostensibly should be asked in any and every era. But the question is particularly problematic today, not just for the obvious reason of technologies that have produced a contemporary information environment of unprecedented speed and density. More prosaically, the Biden administration inherits a bloated and balkanized national security apparatus, one whose separate and distinct components were created to apply force in specific ways: armies fight on land, navies on the sea, for example. And while each component in the apparatus adapts over time to new and emerging technologies––armies and navies have aviation components, signal and electronic warfare units, etc.––they do so to fulfill their specific and traditionally defined missions.
The Biden administration inherits a bloated and balkanized national security apparatus, one whose separate and distinct components were created to apply force in specific ways: armies fight on land, navies on the sea, for example.
Consider the U.S. Army, for example. With the emphasis in the last National Security Strategy on great power competition, military service leaders advocated the need to prepare to fight “large-scale combat operations” after the years of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan.[1] Army doctrine has made concessions to new technologies and having to fight with other services with its stress on multi-domain operations––which now seems to be morphing into joint all-domain operations.[2] But it has placed great emphasis on developing the capabilities of larger echelon-units such as divisions and corps.
Russian honor guards march during a military parade at Red Square in Moscow on Nov. 7, 2018. (Mladen Antonov/Getty Images)
The challenge here is to recognize that, as currently constituted, the U.S. military services are not organized to effectively fulfill U.S. strategic interests. To ensure they can, policymakers need to more carefully question the American armed forces' traditional priorities. For example, in today’s international environment, what political goals are served by the capacity to deploy tens of thousands of soldiers abroad, with all incredible logistical and material requirements? Under what circumstances would that capacity be needed? And what is the likelihood those circumstances will occur relative to others in which a different configuration of abilities would be more helpful? A corps might be good to fight against Russia or Russian-aligned forces in Eastern Europe or Western Asia. But would the Russians ever consider doing so? Does the U.S. ability to field a corps-sized element even matter to Russia, given their political objectives? Furthermore, how many resources are sucked into developing the capacity of large-echelon units that could be directed to uses that offer more utility for a greater range of political objectives? Would such resources be better served by investing in information security, unmanned technologies that can better withstand lethal conditions on the battlefield, or artificial intelligence, to name but a few options.
While joint doctrine exists to facilitate operational integration among the armed forces, each service branch maintains its own independent doctrine, and consequential discrepancies exist between the latter and the former.
Re-envisioning the priorities of American military services requires policymakers to recognize that whatever capabilities the country needs, the ability to apply or threaten force must always be integrated with political and diplomatic initiatives. Many readers will recall Clausewitz’s most oft-repeated phrase, “War is merely the continuation of policy by other means,” expresses this notion.[3] But more broadly, it also raises the issue of what are all the available means to pursue policy, and how should they––military and otherwise––be integrated to achieve political objectives? The problem is the military services generally do not prepare officers to thoroughly address such concerns relative to preparing their forces for traditional missions and tasks. Indeed, most U.S. Army officers have heard of Clausewitz, and many will have some familiarity with On War. But the time devoted to studying this and other sources that provide insight into how one employs force in conjunction with other means for achieving strategic objectives is, in fact, little relative to the amount of time they devote to duties defined by branch and the prerogatives of tactical command.
Of course, the problem is not simply the priorities of an individual armed service. It also encompasses how they can work together to achieve national goals, expressed by the term “joint operations.” The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 made this aim a priority, yet realizing it has remained problematic.[4] While joint doctrine exists to facilitate operational integration among the armed forces, each service branch maintains its own independent doctrine, and consequential discrepancies exist between the latter and the former. In any future scenario involving the commitment of large numbers of forces and assets across U.S. military services, those discrepancies enhance the likelihood of both impeding the achievement of strategic aims generating outcomes detrimental to American political interests. Among other possibilities, the latter can include harm and destruction beyond what might be construed as required or needed to achieve U.S. political goals.
The U.S. Air Force's X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle 4 is seen after at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility in Florida May 7, 2017. (Air Force)
Another challenge indicative of America’s sprawling national security apparatus that also impedes joint integration is that each service has developed its own capacity in newer domains such as the electromagnetic spectrum and cyber. As for space, one might think that it is the purview of the newest U.S. service, the Space Force, with a mission to protect satellites and the space-reliant communications upon which U.S. military and civilian agencies depend. But its mission competes––or overlaps––with U.S. Space Command, a “geographic” combatant command that oversees and employs military operational capabilities, to include Space Force and relevant assets from other services, such as the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command.[5]
At the heart of those reforms must be the creation of a cohort of professionals who do not exclusively prioritize action of a particular service, branch, or domain.
For U.S. policymakers concerned with the ability to take efficient and effective action, these redundancies and impediments to coordination should be alarming enough to deserve attention. But the issue is not just the threat that operational breakdowns themselves pose to achieving future strategic aims. The lack of integration among America’s military services has also fueled the country’s persistently high defense budgets, producing systems and platforms that exacerbate the problems of operational redundancy and inherent incompatibility. Case in point is the F-35 “Joint Strike Fighter,” which is widely regarded as too expensive.[6]
Capt. Brad Matherne inside an F-35A Lightning II before a training mission in Nevada in April 2013. (Brett Clashman, U.S. Air Force Photo)
To remedy these problems, the next National Security Strategy must make operational integration a priority. Such integration would provide the requisite foundation for driving the organizational reforms necessary to revamp doctrine, enhance the planning and execution of operations, and the conception and development of systems and platforms to best achieve U.S. strategic goals. At the heart of those reforms must be the creation of a cohort of professionals who do not exclusively prioritize action of a particular service, branch, or domain. Instead, the nation needs experts who appreciate all U.S. components for action in the security realm and understand how to combine and synthesize them to achieve political goals. Moreover, to be effective for the purpose of joint integration, these positions cannot be created as additional layers of bureaucracy within the national security establishment. They need to rationalize and replace current, less effective, and redundant bureaucratic entities.
Note that this is not to argue for abolishing America’s traditional armed services but rather to reduce their distorting focus on the tactical level of war. It is time to recognize that twenty-first-century conditions require that strategic and operational capabilities need to be developed and utilized by women and men whose training, background, and education are not tied to the services' parochial imperatives. The United States requires experts committed to “jointness” and integration, able to synthesize and develop systems, platforms, and doctrine across and regardless of domain, service, or branch in ways to best meet its political goals.
Matthew S. Muehlbauer has taught military history at the United States Military Academy and other schools. He currently works for a U.S. professional military education institution. The views expressed here are his only and do not reflect those of the U.S. Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.
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Header Image: Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tours U.S. Space Command at Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado, March 1, 2021. (DOD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Carlos M. Vazquez II)
Notes:
[1] Lt. Gen. Michael D. Lundy, “Meeting the Challenge of Large-Scale Combat Operations Today and Tomorrow,” Military Review (Sept-Oct 2018), https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/September-October-2018/Lundy-LSCO/; Jen Judson, “The US Army is preparing for major changes to force structure,” DefenseNews, (March 6, 2019), https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/03/06/major-army-force-structure-changes-afoot/.
[2] Kimberly Underwood, “The Army Shapes Joint All-Domain Operations,” Signal (August 1, 2020), https://www.afcea.org/content/army-shapes-joint-all-domain-operations.
[3] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 87.
[4] For a recent treatment, see Kathleen J. McInnis, “Goldwater-Nichols at 30: Defense Reform and Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service (June 2, 2016), https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R44474.pdf.
[5] “What's With All the U.S. Space-Related Agencies?” DOD News (Dec. 14, 2020), https://www.defense.gov/Explore/Features/Story/Article/2446327/whats-with-all-the-us-space-related-agencies/
[6] See for example Joe Gould and Valerie Insinna, “Ripping F-35 costs, House Armed Services chairman looks to ‘cut our losses,’” DefenseNews March 6, 2021, https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2021/03/05/ripping-f-35-costs-house-armed-services-chairman-looking-to-cut-our-losses/