Richard D. Newton and Jennifer Walters
The myopic focus on peer competitors that characterizes US military institutional thinking today is a mistake. In modern history, the overwhelming majority of wars have been limited. According to a RAND study, over the past century war between nations has become “increasingly rare and occurs mostly at lower intensities.” US defense planning, however, is again focusing almost exclusively on peer competitors. The Department of Defense and the services are reorienting away from the messy, unpleasant, and irregular wars the nation fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria over the last twenty years, to their preferred paradigm: deterring conventional, multidomain warfare, with China as the pacing threat for organizing, training, and equipping US forces. Deterring a land war in Europe against Russia is a second priority, while managing aggression from Iran, North Korea, and violent extremist organizations collectively holds third place, although Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown that the relative priority of these threats can and will change, disrupting strategic planning.
This makes a degree of sense given Chinese and Russian military investments, policy declarations, and aggressive behavior toward their neighbors. However, there are serious limitations to a deterrence strategy focused on a narrow set of capabilities, as the United States discovered when it was unable to assist East German, Polish, and Hungarian uprisings against the Soviet Union during the early decades of the Cold War. If history offers any insight for the future, deterring war between strategic peers virtually guarantees the growth of limited, irregular conflicts. As Army Chief of Staff General James McConville has observed, in this new era of strategic competition between the three major powers, there will likely be more, not fewer, instances of limited war, and those will take place far from where the services are planning, training, and equipping to fight China and Russia.
This Irregular Warfare Initiative article was originally posted through our partner organization, the Modern War Institute at West Point. Continue reading the full article here.
Image credit: Gunnery Sgt. Steve Cushman, US Marine Corps
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