The Pentagon last week released a new National Defense Strategy that emphasizes preparation for small-scale conflicts rather than conventional warfare.
“An underlying assumption in our understanding of the strategic environment is that the predominant near-term challenges to the United States will come from state and non-state actors using irregular and catastrophic capabilities,” the document reads.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in a July 31 press briefing following the roll-out, called for funding of irregular capabilities in the department’s base budget.
“To date, virtually all the costs associated with such capabilities have been covered by supplemental appropriations,” said Gates. “Looking to the future, we need to find a long-term place in the base budget for them.”
He noted that the fiscal year 2009 defense budget contains $104 billion in procurement and about $80 billion in research and development funding, and that the “the overwhelming preponderance” of that money is “for conventional modernization programs.” Conversely, funding for the irregular wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and other areas has come from supplemental budgets.
“The principal challenge, therefore, is how to ensure that the capabilities gained and counterinsurgency lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the lessons we learned from other places where we have engaged in irregular warfare over the last two decades, are institutionalized within the defense establishment,” Gates said.
The National Defense Strategy updates a document issued in 2005 under then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The new document maintains language from the Rumsfeld era, calling the struggle against various terrorist groups part of a larger “Long War.”
The new strategy states that U.S. predominance in conventional warfare “is not unchallenged, but is sustainable for the medium term given current trends.”
Gates, in his briefing, added that the likelihood of the United States engaging in conventional warfare in the near future is, in his estimation, low.
“I firmly believe that in the years ahead, our military is much more likely to engage in asymmetric conflict than conventional conflict against a rising state power,” he said. He added that “we must be ready for both kinds of conflict, and fund the capabilities to do both.”
According to the document, however, the irregular capabilities will take on greater importance.
“We will continue to focus our investments on building capabilities to address these [irregular] challenges, while examining areas where we can assume greater risk,” it states.
The strategy document specifically identifies the need for improvements in capabilities for defeating terrorist networks and “preventing adversaries’ acquisition and use of weapons of mass destruction.”
“One area of particular focus is developing the means to locate, tag and track WMD components,” it states. “We also must continue to improve our acquisition and contracting regulations, procedures, and oversight to ensure agile and timely procurement of critical equipment and materials for our forces.”
In addition, the Pentagon hopes to “transform industrial-era organizational structures into an information and knowledge-based enterprise” through the use of innovative technologies, according to the paper.
The document says the “Long War” is not only military, but is also a “war of ideas” and that will require the United States and its allies to assist developing countries in rooting out extremists by helping improve security, governance and economic opportunity around the world.
At the same time, the strategy says the United States must deter “rogue nations” such as Iran and North Korea, and it must also be prepared to address potential conventional threats from emerging powers such as China and Russia.
It concludes that “we cannot do everything, or function equally well across the spectrum of conflict. Ultimately, we must make choices.”