Reality Intrudes, Pt MCXXVII

Via DefenseTech, the New York Times reports that the Pentagon is realizing that it's "Two-War Strategy" is now, and always was full of shit.

WASHINGTON, July 4 - The Pentagon's most senior planners are challenging the longstanding strategy that requires the armed forces to be prepared to fight two major wars at a time. Instead, they are weighing whether to shape the military to mount one conventional campaign while devoting more resources to defending American territory and antiterrorism efforts....

The intense debate reflects a growing recognition that the current burden of maintaining forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with the other demands of the global campaign against terrorism, may force a change in the assumptions that have been the foundation of all military planning.

The concern that the concentration of troops and weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan was limiting the Pentagon's ability to deal with other potential armed conflicts was underscored by Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a classified risk assessment to Congress this spring. But the current review is the first by the Pentagon in decades to seriously question the wisdom of the two-war strategy.

The two-war model provides enough people and weapons to mount a major campaign, like the Persian Gulf war of 1991 or the invasion of Iraq in 2003, while maintaining enough reserves to respond in a similar manner elsewhere....

After years of saying American forces were sufficient for a two-war strategy, "we've come to the realization that we're not," said another Defense Department official involved in the deliberations, who was granted anonymity because he could not otherwise discuss the talks, which are classified. "It's coming to grips with reality."

One of the lessons that wasn't learned in the first Gulf war was how fortunate the American Army actually was. There was essentially no fighting deep in the country itself - the Iraqi Army was destroyed while it sat on the border of Saudi Arabia, after having endured the most punishing air campaign in recent history. Add to this the poor level of training of Iraqi conscripts, and the fact that the US Army never really encountered the Republican Guard, and suddenly the US Army looks like it got off pretty easy in Gulf I.

This isn't to say that the US Army isn't a terribly impressive engine of destruction - it is. But a lot of strategic thought was built around the illusion that every enemy would be as easily destroyed as the invaders of Kuwait were. The two-war theory itself predates Gulf I by quite a while, but the success of American forces in 1991 certainly bolstered the theory.

Now, fast-forward fifteen years, and suddenly the US Army realizes that as impressive as it's power is against other conventional forces, the moment the US Army stops moving - i.e., in a non-conventional war - it becomes terribly vulnerable.

This, of course, is possible the largest cost of the war in Iraq for American strategic thinking - the US has lost the aura of invincibility it had after Gulf I and the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo. If North Korea decided to act now, there's not much the US could do about it except turn Pyongyang in to rubble - meanwhile, most of the South would be similarly destroyed.

It's good to see the Pentagon beginning to wake up from this delusion. Maybe it will keep the brass from encouraging fool's errands in the future.