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http://www.armytimes.com/news/...jfcom_report_120408/
JFCOM releases study on future threats
By John T. Bennett - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Dec 4, 2008 15:49:23 EST
A new U.S. Joint Forces Command planning document offers insights into planning for irregular conflicts, urges long-promised acquisition reform, and outlines potential threats and enemies.
Released Thursday, the “Joint Operating Environment” document is a “historically informed, forward-looking effort to discern most accurately the challenges we will face at the operational level of war, and to determine their inherent implications,” Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, JFCOM commander, writes in its foreword. “Its purpose is not to predict, but to suggest ways leaders might think about the future.”
The study is meant to inform joint concept development and experimentation by the U.S. military and “other leaders and professionals in the national security field.”
The study is largely a response to three questions:
• What future trends and disruptions are likely to affect the joint force over the next quarter century?
• How are these trends and disruptions likely to define the future contexts for joint operations?
• What are the implications of these trends and contexts for the joint force?”
Its authors considered politics, military efforts, demographic changes, globalization, economic trends, energy competition, food and water scarcity, climate change, cyber threats and pandemics.
The study predicts future U.S. forces’ missions will range “from regular and irregular wars in remote lands, to relief and reconstruction in crisis zones, to sustained engagement in the global commons.”
Some of these missions will be spawned by “rational political calculation,” others by “uncontrolled passion.”
And future foes will attack U.S. forces in a number of ways.
“Our enemy’s capabilities will range from explosive vests worn by suicide bombers to long-range precision-guided cyber, space, and missile attacks,” the study said. “The threat of mass destruction — from nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons — will likely expand from stable nation-states to less stable states and even non-state networks.”
The document also echoes Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other U.S. military leaders who say America is likely in “an era of persistent conflict.”
During the next 25 years, it says, “There will continue to be those who will hijack and exploit Islam and other beliefs for their own extremist ends. There will continue to be opponents who will try to disrupt the political stability and deny the free access to the global commons that is crucial to the world’s economy.”
The study gives substantial ink to what could happen in places of strategic import to Washington, such as Russia, China, Africa, Europe, Asia and the Indian Ocean region.
Extremists and militias
But it calls the Middle East and Central Asia “the center of instability” where U.S. troops will be engaged for some time against radical Islamic groups.
The study does not rule out a fight against a peer nation’s military, but stresses preparation for irregular foes such as those that complicated the Iraq war for years.
Leaders must avoid “the failure to recognize and fully confront the irregular fight that we are in. The requirement to prepare to meet a wide range of threats is going to prove particularly difficult for American forces in the period between now and the 2030s,” the study said.
“The difficulties involved in training to meet regular and nuclear threats must not push preparations to fight irregular war into the background, as occurred in the decades after the Vietnam War.”
Irregular wars are likely to be carried out by terrorist groups, “modern-day militias,” and other non-state actors, the study said.
It noted the 2006 tussle between Israel and Hezbollah, a militia that “combines state-like technological and war-fighting capabilities with a ‘sub-state’ political and social structure inside the formal state of Lebanon.”
One retired Army colonel called the study “the latest in a serious of glaring examples of massive overreaction to a truly modest threat” — Islamist terrorism.
“It is causing the United States to essentially undermine itself without terrorists or anyone else for that matter having to do much more than exploit the weaknesses in American military power the overreaction creates,” said Douglas Macgregor, who writes about Defense Department reform at the Washington-based Center for Defense Information.
“Unfortunately, the document echoes the neocons, who insist the United States will face the greatest threats from insurgents and extremist groups operating in weak or failing states in the Middle East and Africa.”
Macgregor called that “delusional thinking,” adding that he hopes “Georgia’s quick and decisive defeat at the hands of Russian combat forces earlier this year [is] a very stark reminder why terrorism and fighting a war against it using large numbers of military forces should never have been made an organizing principle of U.S. defense policy.”
Failing states
The study also warns about weak and failing states, including Mexico and Pakistan.
“Some forms of collapse in Pakistan would carry with it the likelihood of a sustained violent and bloody civil and sectarian war, an even bigger haven for violent extremists, and the question of what would happen to its nuclear weapons,” said the study. “That ‘perfect storm’ of uncertainty alone might require the engagement of U.S. and coalition forces into a situation of immense complexity and danger with no guarantee they could gain control of the weapons and with the real possibility that a nuclear weapon might be used.”
On Mexico, JFCOM warns that how the nation’s politicians and courts react to a “sustained assault” by criminal gangs and drug cartels will decide whether chaos becomes the norm on America’s southern border.
“Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone,” said the report.
But Macgregor warns against forming military plans around repairing ailing nations.
“The world is full of failed states and always has been. Trying to rectify this situation by governing and developing failed societies and said with American military power will bankrupt us and change nothing of substance in these regions,” he said. “It’s time Americans woke up and recognized that so-called [counterinsurgency] in Iraq, along with the nation-building it implies, is a euphemism for territorial imperialism, an economic, military and political loser.”
Macgregor said the study seems to suggest the U.S. military should prepare to conduct operations like the one in Iraq in the future.
Using the American military to try and impose a Western-style democracy in Iraq — which Macgregor dubs “altruistic imperialism” — has proven difficult, and may yet still fail, he said. “So why would we want to repeat this foolishness again and again?”
Bear and dragon
The JFCOM study team examines potential rival nations China and Russia.
Beijing is dealing with domestic social and economic issues, building up its large military, and keeping a keen eye on Western nations’ economic and military developments. Evidence suggests Chinese officials think their country can compete with America on a near-equal footing in areas such as submarines, space,and cyber warfare, the study said.
Yet “the Chinese have drawn the lesson that they must not pursue military development at the expense of economic development” — that means no traditional arms race, the study said.
“If one examines their emerging military capabilities in intelligence, submarines, cyber, and space, one sees an asymmetrical operational approach that is different from Western approaches, one consistent with the classical Chinese strategic thinkers.”
The report describes a Russia increasingly controlled by security services and funded by oil and gas sales. Yet its authors conclude that it is doubtful Moscow would be able to rebuild the “military machine of the old Soviet Union.”
Instead, they say, Russian officials “may be attempting to make up for demographic and conventional military inferiority by modernizing its nuclear forces, including warheads, delivery systems, and doctrines,” according to the report. “It is also exploring and fielding strategic systems based on what it terms “new physical principles” including novel stealth and hypersonic technologies.”
Moscow could be preparing to take back some of its former republics that were lost in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“At present there is a dangerous combination of paranoia — some of it justified, considering Russia’s history — nationalism, and bitterness at the loss of what many Russians regard as their rightful place as a great power,” it said. “It was just such a mixture, along with a series of unfortunate events that drove Nazi Germany on its ill-thought-out course.”
Link to report:
http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/...ive/2008/JOE2008.pdf
JFCOM releases study on future threats
By John T. Bennett - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Dec 4, 2008 15:49:23 EST
A new U.S. Joint Forces Command planning document offers insights into planning for irregular conflicts, urges long-promised acquisition reform, and outlines potential threats and enemies.
Released Thursday, the “Joint Operating Environment” document is a “historically informed, forward-looking effort to discern most accurately the challenges we will face at the operational level of war, and to determine their inherent implications,” Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, JFCOM commander, writes in its foreword. “Its purpose is not to predict, but to suggest ways leaders might think about the future.”
The study is meant to inform joint concept development and experimentation by the U.S. military and “other leaders and professionals in the national security field.”
The study is largely a response to three questions:
• What future trends and disruptions are likely to affect the joint force over the next quarter century?
• How are these trends and disruptions likely to define the future contexts for joint operations?
• What are the implications of these trends and contexts for the joint force?”
Its authors considered politics, military efforts, demographic changes, globalization, economic trends, energy competition, food and water scarcity, climate change, cyber threats and pandemics.
The study predicts future U.S. forces’ missions will range “from regular and irregular wars in remote lands, to relief and reconstruction in crisis zones, to sustained engagement in the global commons.”
Some of these missions will be spawned by “rational political calculation,” others by “uncontrolled passion.”
And future foes will attack U.S. forces in a number of ways.
“Our enemy’s capabilities will range from explosive vests worn by suicide bombers to long-range precision-guided cyber, space, and missile attacks,” the study said. “The threat of mass destruction — from nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons — will likely expand from stable nation-states to less stable states and even non-state networks.”
The document also echoes Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other U.S. military leaders who say America is likely in “an era of persistent conflict.”
During the next 25 years, it says, “There will continue to be those who will hijack and exploit Islam and other beliefs for their own extremist ends. There will continue to be opponents who will try to disrupt the political stability and deny the free access to the global commons that is crucial to the world’s economy.”
The study gives substantial ink to what could happen in places of strategic import to Washington, such as Russia, China, Africa, Europe, Asia and the Indian Ocean region.
Extremists and militias
But it calls the Middle East and Central Asia “the center of instability” where U.S. troops will be engaged for some time against radical Islamic groups.
The study does not rule out a fight against a peer nation’s military, but stresses preparation for irregular foes such as those that complicated the Iraq war for years.
Leaders must avoid “the failure to recognize and fully confront the irregular fight that we are in. The requirement to prepare to meet a wide range of threats is going to prove particularly difficult for American forces in the period between now and the 2030s,” the study said.
“The difficulties involved in training to meet regular and nuclear threats must not push preparations to fight irregular war into the background, as occurred in the decades after the Vietnam War.”
Irregular wars are likely to be carried out by terrorist groups, “modern-day militias,” and other non-state actors, the study said.
It noted the 2006 tussle between Israel and Hezbollah, a militia that “combines state-like technological and war-fighting capabilities with a ‘sub-state’ political and social structure inside the formal state of Lebanon.”
One retired Army colonel called the study “the latest in a serious of glaring examples of massive overreaction to a truly modest threat” — Islamist terrorism.
“It is causing the United States to essentially undermine itself without terrorists or anyone else for that matter having to do much more than exploit the weaknesses in American military power the overreaction creates,” said Douglas Macgregor, who writes about Defense Department reform at the Washington-based Center for Defense Information.
“Unfortunately, the document echoes the neocons, who insist the United States will face the greatest threats from insurgents and extremist groups operating in weak or failing states in the Middle East and Africa.”
Macgregor called that “delusional thinking,” adding that he hopes “Georgia’s quick and decisive defeat at the hands of Russian combat forces earlier this year [is] a very stark reminder why terrorism and fighting a war against it using large numbers of military forces should never have been made an organizing principle of U.S. defense policy.”
Failing states
The study also warns about weak and failing states, including Mexico and Pakistan.
“Some forms of collapse in Pakistan would carry with it the likelihood of a sustained violent and bloody civil and sectarian war, an even bigger haven for violent extremists, and the question of what would happen to its nuclear weapons,” said the study. “That ‘perfect storm’ of uncertainty alone might require the engagement of U.S. and coalition forces into a situation of immense complexity and danger with no guarantee they could gain control of the weapons and with the real possibility that a nuclear weapon might be used.”
On Mexico, JFCOM warns that how the nation’s politicians and courts react to a “sustained assault” by criminal gangs and drug cartels will decide whether chaos becomes the norm on America’s southern border.
“Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone,” said the report.
But Macgregor warns against forming military plans around repairing ailing nations.
“The world is full of failed states and always has been. Trying to rectify this situation by governing and developing failed societies and said with American military power will bankrupt us and change nothing of substance in these regions,” he said. “It’s time Americans woke up and recognized that so-called [counterinsurgency] in Iraq, along with the nation-building it implies, is a euphemism for territorial imperialism, an economic, military and political loser.”
Macgregor said the study seems to suggest the U.S. military should prepare to conduct operations like the one in Iraq in the future.
Using the American military to try and impose a Western-style democracy in Iraq — which Macgregor dubs “altruistic imperialism” — has proven difficult, and may yet still fail, he said. “So why would we want to repeat this foolishness again and again?”
Bear and dragon
The JFCOM study team examines potential rival nations China and Russia.
Beijing is dealing with domestic social and economic issues, building up its large military, and keeping a keen eye on Western nations’ economic and military developments. Evidence suggests Chinese officials think their country can compete with America on a near-equal footing in areas such as submarines, space,and cyber warfare, the study said.
Yet “the Chinese have drawn the lesson that they must not pursue military development at the expense of economic development” — that means no traditional arms race, the study said.
“If one examines their emerging military capabilities in intelligence, submarines, cyber, and space, one sees an asymmetrical operational approach that is different from Western approaches, one consistent with the classical Chinese strategic thinkers.”
The report describes a Russia increasingly controlled by security services and funded by oil and gas sales. Yet its authors conclude that it is doubtful Moscow would be able to rebuild the “military machine of the old Soviet Union.”
Instead, they say, Russian officials “may be attempting to make up for demographic and conventional military inferiority by modernizing its nuclear forces, including warheads, delivery systems, and doctrines,” according to the report. “It is also exploring and fielding strategic systems based on what it terms “new physical principles” including novel stealth and hypersonic technologies.”
Moscow could be preparing to take back some of its former republics that were lost in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“At present there is a dangerous combination of paranoia — some of it justified, considering Russia’s history — nationalism, and bitterness at the loss of what many Russians regard as their rightful place as a great power,” it said. “It was just such a mixture, along with a series of unfortunate events that drove Nazi Germany on its ill-thought-out course.”
Link to report:
http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/...ive/2008/JOE2008.pdf
