House Armed Services Committee members Randy Forbes (R-Va.) and Colleen Hanabusa (D-Hawaii) introduced a bill to support the rebalance to the Asia-Pacific two months ago, but they said Thursday that moving forward will be challenging unless the whole-of-government agrees on a goal and a strategy for the rebalance.

The two lawmakers told the audience at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event that they wrote the bill to put substance behind the Obama administration’s talk of the rebalance. But while most people across government seem to agree that many of the United States’ economic, diplomatic and military challenges and opportunities in the next decade or longer will come from the Pacific, they have not yet answered the basic questions of what the strategy should be to achieve what goals in the region.

Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), chairman of the House Armed Services seapower and projection forces subcommittee
Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), chairman of the House Armed Services seapower and projection forces subcommittee

Forbes and Hanabusa said they, too, still don’t know what the strategy should be, and therefore how that affects what military programs to support. As much as they can point to some weapons and platforms that would be relevant in the Pacific – amphibious ships, the Littoral Combat Ship and Virginia-class attack submarines, they mentioned – advocating for smart acquisition in a time of limited resources will be difficult without a broader idea of what the United States hopes to accomplish.

Hanabusa noted there was great disagreement among current and former Navy officials and Congress over not just the size but also the composition of the naval fleet. The answer, she said, lies in “who we’re looking to, where we’re looking to be.”

“Each ally, they have a desire or need for a certain kind of support,” she said. “Everyone says they want us there, but everyone’s definition of wanting us there differs.”

Some countries may want to train with sailors aboard the smaller LCS, whereas others want the assurance that a missile defense-capable cruiser or destroyer is nearby, she said.

Forbes noted during the talk that some countries, including China, may pursue a cost-imposition strategy on the United States. By developing an anti-access/area-denial environment, for example, they force the United States to either spend a lot more money or choose not to operate in that area.

But he warned against letting a competitor dictate what the U.S. buys, instead saying the Pentagon and Congress needed a long-term plan they could stick to.

“It’s easy to fall into that trap, and we’ll never get it completely right,” Forbes told Defense Daily after the event. “We need to be looking at two things. One is, how we do cost-imposition strategies on others. But also … every time they have a new weapon system or platform, we just don’t run out and try to cover it. We need to look and say, okay, is this a place where they’re doing cost-imposition strategies against us? There’s not enough of that debate, discussion behind closed doors as there needs to be, so we’re trying to encourage that to happen.”

Speculating on what the rebalance might look like once fully implemented, Hanabusa offered the F-35 program as an example of international cooperation that should continue.

“We’re building the F-35 with nine allies together,” she said. “Everyone has an investment in this new fighter, the F-35. And it does a variety of things. One, it opens it up a process where everyone feels an investment. It also, to a large extent, defrays our costs. We’re not the only ones supplying it: everyone in the region who has an investment, whether it’s Australia, Japan, will then be part of it and have their own fighter force instead of being exclusive as we have in the past.

“I use that as an example because I think that if we’re really seriously going to look at protecting the region and with the resources that we do have, whatever that configuration will be, we need to be able to count on our allies to carry part of that as well,” Hanabusa said.