U.S. DEFENSE STRATEGY AFTER THE PANDEMIC
APRIL 20, 2021
After a year of loss and lockdowns,
America’s vaccination efforts are slowly allowing the country to reopen. At
long last, things are very slowly starting to feel normal. Among other things,
this moment provides analysts the opportunity to consider how the pandemic has
affected domestic support for America’s defense strategy, and whether the
country will be able to afford it over the long term. This will be a difficult
conversation, as it will necessarily require questioning longstanding assumptions
in America’s strategic community.
Former Deputy Secretary of Defense
Robert Work kicked off the conversation in a recent article. Published before
the Biden administration released its Fiscal Year 2022 presidential budget
request, Work’s essay highlighted the difficult trade-offs facing Defense
Department leadership if, as he anticipated correctly, defense spending
remained flat over the next year.
While Work raised a number of salient
points, I’m concerned that his analysis will ultimately prove too optimistic.
After the devastation of the pandemic, Americans and their leaders in Washington are right to
scrutinize defense spending when investments in public health would seem to
have a more direct impact on their well-being. In my view, it’s entirely
plausible that in the near- to medium-term, the Defense Department will have to
grapple with deep spending cuts.
The Pentagon may wish to continue to
implement the 2018 National Defense Strategy as if the
pandemic and recession never happened — but it would only be wishing. Instead,
the policy and strategic community should evaluate U.S. national security
strategy under much more austere defense spending scenarios.
The purpose of this article is to push past the now dated assumptions of 2018
and catalyze a debate updating my Foreign Policy Research Institute study
about pressing strategic trade-offs and Pentagon resource options. This article
offers three distinct Defense Department budget levels (a flat-lined $715
billion at new FY2022 request level, a 5 percent reduction to $665 billion, and
a 10 percent cut, which would bring defense spending down to roughly $625
billion). The article outlines general defense strategies for these scenarios.
Each strategy — sustained security, shaped security, and selective security —
has different foreign policy implications, different force levels, and
resourcing priorities to best match means with ends.
Strategy and Budget Scenarios
The U.S. defense budget could be
significantly impacted by the national socioeconomic fallout from the pandemic.
The Pentagon has spent the last few years implementing a National Defense Strategy focused on
strategic competition with major powers. It’s fairly certain the Defense
Department will not get the sustained and stable funding needed to fully
implement the National Defense Strategy. A number of conservative defense analysts have
recognized that defense spending will be cut over time. As noted by Work and
others, the fundamental economic assumptions undergirding that strategy are not
valid anymore, and more than a cosmetic rewrite is now required to align ends
with limited means.
The following sub-sections explore three
potential future defense spending levels (see Figure 1), with the associated
impact of each on defense strategy. These are illustrative to raise key
trade-offs, and are displayed in Figure 1. This analysis will address the
Pentagon base FY2022 budget, which the Biden administration has submitted at
$715 billion. The Office of Management and Budget outlined the president’s budget, which is
less than the Trump administration’s submission ($722 billion), and represents
a decrease in purchasing power when inflation and military pay increases are
factored in. The administration’s request signals that the projected era of
future flat budgets has arrived. Of course, Congress will ultimately decide the
final budget.
Figure 1: Strategic Options and
Funding Levels
Source: Chart generated by the author
Sustained Stability
The first option for U.S. defense
strategy, “sustained stability” assumes that the president’s FY2022 budget
request is a static level of funding for the next five or more years. This
would negate the desired steady and predictable growth that past defense
leaders stated was necessary to implement the National Defense Strategy.
That strategy followed expectations for significant modernization funding and
some growth in the size of the U.S. armed forces. Even with inflation covered,
the department would have to continuously seek out efficiencies to pay for new
programs or increased cost growth beyond inflation.
A flat spending level, with no
additional funding for a larger Army and a bigger fleet, does not invalidate
the National Defense Strategy’s major priorities. However,
this scenario does undermine secondary objectives and missions including tasks
in the Middle East or the Arctic, while also increasing risk in other theaters.
However, some legacy programs (or a number of F-35 fighters) could be cut as
seed corn for a new generation of what T.X. Hammes called the “small, smart, and many”
instead of investing more into smaller numbers of very expensive and exquisite
platforms like Ford-class carriers or manned bombers.
The Navy’s plans to increase the fleet to
355 ships and beyond would be postponed. As the Congressional Budget Office
notes, the Navy’s shipbuilding plans were
fiscally ambitious anyway. In this scenario, 300 ships would be the new goal
for manned vessels.
While reducing the size of the ground force,
this option would sustain a robust investment account for conventional forces,
as well as enhanced space and cyber capabilities as detailed in the space threat assessment by the Center for
Strategic and International Studies.
No alliance commitments would be reduced
under this option. While some forward reductions could impact the Army, the
United States would still meet commitments to allies in Asia and Europe.
Shaped Security
Under “shaped security,” the Pentagon’s
budget would be reduced by about $40 billion per year to a $665 billion annual
level. This budget reduction would focus on cutting U.S. military operations
overseas, including operations in Afghanistan, Syria, and Africa, which in
FY2020 were budgeted at $26 billion. Some reductions in
the Army (three to five Army brigades) would have to be considered under this
scenario.
The strategy under shaped security
orients the U.S. military toward maintaining supremacy on the global commons,
and a division of labor with its key allies on continental Eurasia and Africa.
The force design would emphasize seapower and spacepower. The maritime services
(i.e., Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard) would serve as the mechanism for
America’s forward partnering maritime-based strategy with key allies.
Mastery of the global commons is necessary to ensure the United States is
capable of a global response to a crisis, and to preserve vital interests in
international trade and freedom of navigation.
The Defense Department is currently not
well postured in the Indo-Pacific theater. Indeed, a more flexible posture is
needed. Naval and aerospace capabilities should be leveraged and adapted to
achieve a more resilient vulnerable posture. There are alternative Air Force designs for
increasing the contributions of aerospace capabilities against peer competitors
in increasingly contested operating environments. Moving away from
short-legged, manned fighters to long-range unmanned systems is an option,
but will be a cultural shift despite resource and operational benefits.
Additionally, the Space Force would a priority because, as former Defense
official Jim Thomas has forewarned, “Whoever controls space will have an
advantage in future terrestrial conflicts.”
There are strategic trade-offs to be
made between current readiness and modernizing for the future. As Doug Berenson
has argued in these pages, the Defense Department could get off the hamster wheel and look at reducing
overhead and operating costs. Another option, which would capture potential
savings, would be to rely more on the National Guard and reserve component to
reduce costs. At least two of the service chiefs believe that modernization
should be the priority. The Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Charles Brown, and
the commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. David Berger, have observed, “Our
current readiness model strongly biases spending on legacy capabilities for
yesterday’s missions, at the expense of building readiness in the arena of
great-power competition and investing in modern capabilities for the missions
of both today and tomorrow.”
Selective Investment
The darkest fiscal scenario would result
in a snap back to sequestration levels that the Defense Department faced in the
last decade following the recession of 2008 to 2009. That would bring the
Pentagon budget down to roughly $620 billion, a level that could be termed “panquestration.” This strategy would
pursue cuts in active-duty military personnel levels (as well as civilian
overhead) to preserve modernization and investment capital.
Such a scenario, similar to the Center
for Strategic and International Studies’ Innovation Superiority Strategy, would mandate
a new national security strategy, as well as major revisions to the National
Defense Strategy. It would require significant force reductions, reduced
U.S. basing and exercises overseas, and changed modernization plans. Cuts in
Navy battle fleet ships (from 300 to 260) would be required, as well as 30
tactical squadrons from the U.S. Air Force, including most non-stealthy and
short-range fighters. Regrettably, this will constrain the Pentagon’s ability
to build up the Navy fleet as desired, but it could still be enough to restore American maritime superiority in
the Pacific. The Marines could be reduced to two full divisions and air wings.
These reductions would, with little doubt, reduce America’s ability to sustain
forward-based forces overseas. The United States would also have to reconceive
and invest in a new theory of power projection operations.
This option takes most of the cuts in
force size to protect future modernization needs. Further reductions in
investment capital for research and procurement could hobble the U.S. military
in the midst of an era with numerous emerging technologies (robotics, unmanned
systems, AI, hypervelocity missiles, and quantum computing). Analysts find
investments in these areas are already insufficient.
In the selective investment strategy, a
focus on greater experimentation and investments in disruptive technologies in
space, cyber, and hypervelocity missiles is privileged over existing force
levels. Building off the approach initiated by Work, the principal imperative
of this strategy would be a ruthless prioritization of capabilities for
deterring major competitors, while carefully investing in a research and
development portfolio for breakthrough 21st century innovations as outlined in
the Third Offset Strategy. These ideas have been
recently reinforced by former Senate Staff Director Chris Brose in his
provocative book Kill Chain.
Assessment
These illustrative scenarios and
strategies highlight the dynamics of risk, sustainable means, focused
priorities, and trade-offs. As the national debt grows
dramatically to provide relief from COVID-19, Congress and the
Pentagon will likely have to consider such options about the future. A future of
flat defense budget growth (sustained stability) does not require many
trade-offs, and preserves America’s hard power so long as it’s modernized. Most
importantly, it preserves the country’s ability to maintain commitments in a
disorderly world. But this optimistic budget future is unlikely given the costs
of the pandemic and internal security challenges in the United States. At the
other extreme, an abrupt return to sequestration-level cuts may appeal to
domestic needs, but would also be strategically irresponsible.
Shaped security offers a reasonable
halfway point that allows the Pentagon to preserve deterrence and contribute to
the collective security that has been key to U.S. defense strategy since World
War II. It balances risk better than panquestration funding, even if the latter
approach were allowed to be strategically shaped. But since U.S. security is
enhanced by its extensive network of friends, partners, and allies via
collective security, the shaped security strategy has merit. America will need
its alliances and partnerships after the
pandemic. More than at any time in the last 30 years, a revamped network of
partners is critical to U.S. national security.
A key aspect of selective investment — a
strategy to cope with massive defense spending cuts — is its sharp focus on
technological competitiveness and capability development. The downside of the
selective investment option is potentially large force structure reductions,
and its dependence on achieving a number of breakthroughs in operational
capabilities. The theory of success of this approach depends on these
technological enhancements producing sustainable competitive advantages. There
is a growing consensus that the country needs to invest in emerging critical
technologies, particularly AI, that will shape economic prosperity and
security in the future. As a comprehensive study by the House Armed Services
Committee noted, “To remain competitive, the United States must prioritize the
development of emerging technologies over fielding and maintaining legacy systems.”
The Biden administration recognizes the
trade-offs involved in national security decision-making. Its interim strategic guidance wisely
noted that the Defense Department should prioritize disruptive opportunities in
its modernization plans. Husbanding scarce resources for research and
development and critical, long-term modernization is an appropriate move for
the administration. The Defense Department is not spending enough on the
funding needed to appreciably impact defense innovation over time. While
system development and demonstration budgets
are heading in the right direction, this should be protected. They are the
fiscal bridge to ensure that breakthrough capabilities transition from labs and
prototypes to the combat forces.
Selective investment has foreign policy
implications too, as a more technologically focused defense strategy could be
perceived as a retrenchment in the near term and less effective in deterring
opportunistic aggression. Allies such as South Korea or those in NATO may be
unsure of the reliability of U.S. support, and would either invest more in
their own defenses or adopt policies that accommodate North Korean or Russian
interests in their respective regions. Unless selective investment were
accompanied with nuanced diplomacy and technology cooperation, European states
could pursue strategic autonomy more aggressively, and
not coordinate with the United States on foreign policy and security affairs.
At the same time, a reduced presence in Central Asia and the Middle East could
leave a political vacuum for Russia or China to
increase their influence (e.g., the recent Sino-Iranian agreement). Such shifts may set
the ground for long-term success, but may also increase instability in the near
term. As noted by now Deputy Secretary of Defense Kath Hicks, “getting to less” in the Defense Department’s
outlays is not without risks.
A Broader Conception of National
Security
These future strategic and budgetary
options are not driven by a reflexive desire to gut the Pentagon, nor are they
an excuse for slashing defense spending. Policymakers should avoid what former
national security adviser H.R. McMaster calls “retrenchment syndrome.”
At the same time, U.S. political leaders need to forge a new social contract
and obtain public support for a national strategy that balances domestic needs
and international obligations. Achieving a new domestic consensus on American
foreign policy in the face of stark political polarization and income/health
inequality will no doubt prove difficult.
U.S. policymakers and legislators need
to expand their thinking and consider the country’s fiscal future. The federal
debt recently passed the total annual economic production of the country. For
many analysts, including this author, that level was usually held as some sort
of a magic inflection point for how much debt the United States could carry.
After that point, the United States would be seen as fiscally irresponsible,
having overloaded the national credit card and burdened itself with high
interest payments. That self-imposed mental inflection point has
been passed, and the country’s economy is still humming along, and both the
economy and the debt level are projected to grow unabated. So at least one
widely held assumption has been disproved for now. Yet, another old assumption
that should not be jettisoned is the value gained with the U.S. dollar as the
global reserve currency. This “exorbitant privilege” is key to U.S. global
influence and is worth retaining.
Defense cuts do not always follow recessions. But
in the long run, the red ink used for the emergency needs to be put away and a
degree of solvency regained. The politics of debt reduction are not going away.
Hence, more cuts should be expected and the second scenario — shaped security,
in which defense spending takes a 5 percent cut to $665 billion — is the most
likely. The Peterson Foundation projects that by 2030 the U.S. government will
pay nearly $2 billion a day for interest alone.
Extensive government support is warranted in the current crisis, but it’s not sustainable
for the long term.
Conclusion
Coping with the social and economic
costs of the pandemic will draw on significant resources for public health and
economic recovery. This will constrain Pentagon funding more than is currently
envisioned. Some policy experts might prefer to isolate defense spending from
this crisis, as if the pandemic’s fatalities, the recession, and rising
deficits are irrelevant to national security. However, the pandemic has made
clear that there is a price for undercutting health services, emergency stocks,
critical infrastructure, and advanced research and development too. At the same
time, there are trade-offs in cutting defense spending, measured in terms of
risk to U.S. interests and those of its allies. The government will have to
reconcile the tensions between these competing priorities for years to come.
A reshaped and rebalanced security
strategy would not necessarily be a disaster for the United States,
particularly if it creates a stronger and more resilient foundation for the
country’s strength over the long term. Even at lowered funding scenarios, the
United States would remain the best funded and most tested military on the
planet. But regardless of the ultimate budget, if that funding is not carefully
and prudently targeted toward tomorrow’s competitors, U.S. forces will be
unprepared in the years ahead. Under any scenario, “business as usual” is not the operative
paradigm going forward.
Frank Hoffman is a contributing editor
at War on the Rocks, and works at the Institute for National Strategic
Studies at the National Defense University. He earned his Ph.D. at King’s
College, London. This article reflects his own views and not necessarily those
of the Department of Defense.
Image: U.S. Marine Corps (Photo by Cpl. Jamin M. Powell)
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