I should know better than to comment on an article before reading it
thoroughly. But here I am! Actually, the article stirred up my brain
juices, and my remarks have little to do with it...the article, not
the brain.
My thinking for several years has been that we have had a quiet coup.
The Pentagon , in reality the Industrial/Military Complex has
solidified its power. We will therefore, fight war wherever the
profits are greatest. It does not any longer matter who "wins or
loses", so long as the war drags out and the military hardware rolls
out.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/3/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The Pentagon's Spoiling for Another War, Just Not With Iran
Michael T. Klare
The Pentagon's Spoiling for Another War, Just Not With Iran
The Pentagon, headquarters of the Department of Defense. (Master Sgt. Ken
Hammond / U.S. Air Force / Wikimedia Commons)
The recent White House decision to speed the deployment of an aircraft
carrier battle group and other military assets to the Persian Gulf has led
many in Washington and elsewhere to assume that the U.S. is gearing up for
war with Iran. As in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, U.S.
officials have cited suspect intelligence data to justify elaborate war
preparations. On May 13th, acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan
even
presented top White House officials with plans to send as many as 120,000
troops to the Middle East for possible future combat with Iran and its
proxies. Later reports indicated that the Pentagon might be making plans to
send even more soldiers than that.
Hawks in the White House, led by National Security Advisor John Bolton, see
a war aimed at eliminating Iran's clerical leadership as a potentially big
win for Washington. Many top officials in the U.S. military, however, see
the matter quite differently - as potentially a giant step backward into
exactly the kind of low-tech ground war they've been unsuccessfully
enmeshed
in across the Greater Middle East and northern Africa for years and would
prefer to leave behind.
Make no mistake: if President Trump ordered the U.S. military to attack
Iran, it would do so and, were that to happen, there can be little doubt
about the ultimate negative outcome for Iran. Its moth-eaten military
machine is simply no match for the American one. Almost 18 years after
Washington's war on terror was launched, however, there can be little doubt
that any U.S. assault on Iran would also stir up yet more chaos across the
region, displace more people, create more refugees, and leave behind more
dead civilians, more ruined cities and infrastructure, and more angry souls
ready to join the next terror group to pop up. It would surely lead to
another quagmire set of ongoing conflicts for American soldiers. Think:
Iraq
and Afghanistan, exactly the type of no-win scenarios that many top
Pentagon
officials now seek to flee. But don't chalk such feelings up only to a
reluctance to get bogged down in yet one more war-on-terror quagmire. These
days, the Pentagon is also increasingly obsessed with preparations for
another type of war in another locale entirely: a high-intensity conflict
with China, possibly in the South China Sea.
After years of slogging it out with guerrillas and jihadists across the
Greater Middle East, the U.S. military is increasingly keen on preparing to
combat "peer" competitors China and Russia, countries that pose what's
called a "multi-domain" challenge to the United States. This new outlook is
only bolstered by a belief that America's never-ending war on terror has
severely depleted its military, something obvious to both Chinese and
Russian leaders who have taken advantage of Washington's extended
preoccupation with counterterrorism to modernize their forces and equip
them
with advanced weaponry.
For the United States to remain a paramount power - so Pentagon thinking
now
goes - it must turn away from counterterrorism and focus instead on
developing the wherewithal to decisively defeat its great-power rivals.
This
outlook was made crystal clear by then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis in
testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in April 2018. "The
negative impact on military readiness resulting from the longest continuous
period of combat in our nation's history [has] created an overstretched and
under-resourced military," he insisted. Our rivals, he added, used those
same years to invest in military capabilities meant to significantly erode
America's advantage in advanced technology. China, he assured the senators,
is "modernizing its conventional military forces to a degree that will
challenge U.S. military superiority." In response, the United States had
but
one choice: to reorient its own forces for great-power competition.
"Long-term strategic competition - not terrorism - is now the primary focus
of U.S. national security."
This outlook was, in fact, already enshrined in the National Defense
Strategy of the United States of America, the Pentagon's overarching
blueprint governing all aspects of military planning. Its $750 billion
budget proposal for fiscal year 2020, unveiled on March 12th, was said to
be
fully aligned with this approach. "The operations and capabilities
supported
by this budget will strongly position the U.S. military for great-power
competition for decades to come," acting Secretary of Defense Shanahan said
at the time.
In fact, in that budget proposal, the Pentagon made sharp distinctions
between the types of wars it sought to leave behind and those it sees in
its
future. "Deterring or defeating great-power aggression is a fundamentally
different challenge than the regional conflicts involving rogue states and
violent extremist organizations we faced over the last 25 years," it noted.
"The FY 2020 Budget is a major milestone in meeting this challenge," by
financing the more capable force America needs "to compete, deter, and win
in any high-end potential fight of the future."
Girding for "High-End" Combat
If such a high-intensity war were to break out, Pentagon leaders suggest,
it
would be likely to take place simultaneously in every domain of combat -
air, sea, ground, space, and cyberspace - and would feature the widespread
utilization of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI),
robotics, and cyberwarfare. To prepare for such multi-domain engagements,
the 2020 budget includes $58 billion for advanced aircraft, $35 billion for
new warships - the biggest shipbuilding request in more than 20 years -
along with $14 billion for space systems, $10 billion for cyberwar, $4.6
billion for AI and autonomous systems, and $2.6 billion for hypersonic
weapons. You can safely assume, moreover, that each of those amounts will
be
increased in the years to come.
Planning for such a future, Pentagon officials envision clashes first
erupting on the peripheries of China and/or Russia, only to later extend to
their heartland expanses (but not, of course, America's). As those
countries
already possess robust defensive capabilities, any conflict would
undoubtedly quickly involve the use of front-line air and naval forces to
breach their defensive systems - which means the acquisition and deployment
of advanced stealth aircraft, autonomous weapons, hypersonic cruise
missiles, and other sophisticated weaponry. In Pentagon-speak, these are
called anti-access/area-defense (A2/AD) systems.
As it proceeds down this path, the Department of Defense is already
considering future war scenarios. A clash with Russian forces in the Baltic
region of the former Soviet Union is, for instance, considered a distinct
possibility. So the U.S. and allied NATO countries have been bolstering
their forces in that very region and seeking weaponry suitable for attacks
on Russian defenses along that country's western border.
Still, the Pentagon's main focus is a rising China, the power believed to
pose the greatest threat to America's long-term strategic interests.
"China's historically unprecedented economic development has enabled an
impressive military buildup that could soon challenge the U.S. across
almost
all domains," Admiral Harry Harris Jr., commander of the U.S. Pacific
Command (USPACOM) and now the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, typically
testified in March 2018. "China's ongoing military modernization is a core
element of China's stated strategy to supplant the U.S. as the security
partner of choice for countries in the Indo-Pacific."
As Harris made clear, any conflict with China would probably first erupt in
the waters off its eastern coastline and would involve an intense U.S.
drive
to destroy China's A2/AD capabilities, rendering that country's vast
interior essentially defenseless. Harris's successor, Admiral Philip
Davidson, as commander of what is now known as the U.S. Indo-Pacific
Command, or USINDOPACOM, described such a scenario this way in testimony
before Congress in February 2019: "Our adversaries are fielding advanced
anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) systems, advanced aircraft, ships, space,
and cyber capabilities that threaten the U.S. ability to project power and
influence into the region." To overcome such capabilities, he added, the
U.S. must develop and deploy an array of attack systems for "long-range
strike[s]" along with "advanced missile defense systems capable of
detecting, tracking, and engaging advanced air, cruise, ballistic, and
hypersonic threats from all azimuths."
If you read through the testimony of both commanders, you'll soon grasp one
thing: that the U.S. military - or at least the Navy and Air Force - are
focused on a future war-scape in which American forces are no longer
focused
on terrorism or the Middle East, but on employing their most sophisticated
weaponry to overpower the modernized forces of China (or Russia) in a
relatively brief spasm of violence, lasting just days or weeks. These would
be wars in which the mastery of technology, not counterinsurgency or nation
building, would - so, at least, top military officials believe - prove the
decisive factor.
The Pentagon's Preferred Battleground
Such Pentagon scenarios essentially assume that a conflict with China would
initially erupt in the waters of the South China Sea or in the East China
Sea near Japan and Taiwan. U.S. strategists have considered these two
maritime areas America's "first line of defense" in the Pacific since
Admiral George Dewey defeated the Spanish fleet in 1898 and the U.S. seized
the Philippines. Today, USINDOPACOM remains the most powerful force in the
region with major bases in Japan, Okinawa, and South Korea. China, however,
has visibly been working to erode American regional dominance somewhat by
modernizing its navy and installing along its coastlines short- and
medium-range ballistic missiles, presumably aimed at those U.S. bases.
By far its most obvious threat to U.S. dominance in the region, however,
has
been its occupation and militarization of tiny islands in the South China
Sea, a busy maritime thoroughfare bounded by China and Vietnam on one side,
Indonesia and the Philippines on the other. In recent years, the Chinese
have used sand dredged from the ocean bottom to expand some of those
islets,
then setting up military facilities on them, including airstrips, radar
systems, and communications gear. In 2015, China's President Xi Jinping
promised President Obama that his country wouldn't take such action, but
satellite imagery clearly shows that it has done so. While not yet heavily
fortified, those islets provide Beijing with a platform from which to
potentially foil U.S. efforts to further project its power in the region.
"These bases appear to be forward military outposts, built for the
military,
garrisoned by military forces, and designed to project Chinese military
power and capability across the breadth of China's disputed South China Sea
claims," Admiral Harris testified in 2018. "China has built a massive
infrastructure specifically - and solely - to support advanced military
capabilities that can deploy to the bases on short notice."
To be clear, U.S. officials have never declared that the Chinese must
vacate
those islets or even remove their military facilities from them. However,
for some time now, they've been making obvious their displeasure over the
buildup in the South China Sea. In May 2018, for instance, Secretary of
Defense Mattis disinvited the Chinese navy from the biennial "Rim of the
Pacific" exercises, the world's largest multinational naval maneuvers,
saying that "there are consequences" for that country's failure to abide by
Xi's 2015 promise to Obama. "That's a relatively small consequence," he
added. "I believe there are much larger consequences in the future."
What those consequences might be, Mattis never said. But there is no doubt
that the U.S. military has given careful thought to a possible clash in
those waters and has contingency plans in place to attack and destroy all
the Chinese facilities there. American warships regularly sail
provocatively
within a few miles of those militarized islands in what are termed "freedom
of navigation operations," or FRONOPS, while U.S. air and naval forces
periodically conduct large-scale military exercises in the region. Such
activities are, of course, closely monitored by the Chinese. Sometimes,
they
even attempt to impede FRONOPS operations, leading more than once to
near-collisions. In May 2018, Admiral Davidson caused consternation at the
Pentagon by declaring, "China is now capable of controlling the South China
Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States" - a comment
presumably intended as a wake-up call, but also hinting at the kinds of
conflicts U.S. strategists foresee arising in the future.
The Navy's War vs. Bolton's War
The U.S. Navy sends a missile-armed destroyer close to one of those
Chinese-occupied islands just about every few weeks. It's what the U.S.
high
command likes to call "showing the flag" or demonstrating America's resolve
to remain a dominant power in that distant region (though were the Chinese
to do something similar off the U.S. West Coast it would be considered the
scandal of the century and a provocation beyond compare). Just about every
time it happens, the Chinese authorities warn off those ships or send out
their own vessels to shadow and harass them.
On May 6th, for example, the U.S. Navy sent two of its guided-missile
destroyers, the USS Preble and the USS Chung Hoon, on a FRONOPS mission
near
some of those islands, provoking a fierce complaint from Chinese officials.
This deadly game of chicken could, of course, go on for years without shots
being fired or a major crisis erupting. The odds of avoiding such an
incident are bound to drop over time, especially as, in the age of Trump,
U.S.-China tensions over other matters - including trade, technology, and
human rights - continue to grow. American military leaders have clearly
been
strategizing about the possibility of a conflict erupting in this area for
some time and, if Admiral Davidson's remark is any indication, would
respond
to such a possibility with considerably more relish than most of them do to
a possible war with Iran.
Yes, they view Iran as a menace in the Middle East and no doubt would like
to see the demise of that country's clerical regime. Yes, some Army
commanders like General Kenneth McKenzie, head of the U.S. Central Command,
still show a certain John Bolton-style relish for such a conflict. But Iran
today - weakened by years of isolation and trade sanctions - poses no
unmanageable threat to America's core strategic interests and, thanks in
part to the nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration, possesses
no nuclear weapons. Still, can there be any doubt that a war with Iran
would
turn into a messy quagmire, as in Iraq after the invasion of 2003, with
guerrilla uprisings, increased terrorism, and widespread chaos spreading
through the region - exactly the kind of "forever wars" much of the U.S.
military (unlike John Bolton) would prefer to leave behind?
How this will all play out obviously can't be foreseen, but if the U.S.
does
not go to war with Iran, Pentagon reluctance may play a significant role in
that decision. This does not mean, however, that Americans would be free of
the prospect of major bloodshed in the future. The very next U.S. naval
patrol in the South China Sea, or the one after that, could provide the
spark for a major blowup of a very different kind against a far more
powerful - and nuclear-armed - adversary. What could possibly go wrong?
Michael T. Klare / TomDispatch
