The Long War

The Department of Defense presented the Quadrennial Defense Review to the nation this week. Mandated by Congress, the review assesses current and future military requirements based on experience and prediction. This years’ review introduces Americans to “the Long War” for which the Pentagon will require various personnel and weapons systems. The last review was issued just after the 9-11 attacks but largely reflected the world as the US military understood it prior to that event. This year’s review looks at the past four years and projects threats and forces for the next five, 10 and 20 years.

The military, being a practical and adaptive organization, will place more emphasis on non-state terrorism and assymetrical warfare. One of the two simultaneous big wars, a staples of US military doctrine for decades can now be against a non-state enemy. Each branch will field special units to find, track and defuse nuclear and catastrophic weapons. All good for the post 9-11 world. At the same time, our military must also dissuade China, India and Russia from becoming our adversaries. Good for the generals’ and admirals’ big weapons systems. Despite the somewhat changed focus, the review offers little change in military thinking; new programs call for new funding rather than rethinking how to use the existing $400 plus billion Defense budget (not including Iraq). Fred Kaplan at Slate calls the review “...a muddle at best, an assortment of interesting ideas with no scheme for translating them into reality.” Although 9-11 “changed everything” Kaplan notes that the allocation of military resources is little changed from the Cold War era.


Welcome to America’s Brave New World. Defense officials spoke about the new military environment in the Long War. Defense SecretaryRumsfeld said in an address at the National Press Club:

"Compelled by a militant ideology that celebrates murder and suicide with no territory to defend, with little to lose, they will either succeed in changing our way of life, or we will succeed in changing theirs,"

Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England said in an address that Islamic extremists and terrorists are "profoundly more dangerous" than in the past because of technological advances that allow them to operate globally.

Both statements are distortions. Rumsfeld uses the specter of heathen fanatics terrorizing Americans into submission. In fact, the militant ideologues have relatively few suicidal followers and limited capability to attack. At their worst, these suicidal extremists have pulled off one spectacular attack. Beyond 9-11 their efforts have been minimal, with a kill count not totaling a thousand. Terrorism is no small problem but it hardly rises to the level of an endless war. Endless vigilance, perhaps, but not war. That’s why a Global War on Terrorism is such a bogus premise for national security policy. It exaggerates a real problem and distorts the thought process. In the process, however, the terrorists succeed in changing our way of life by providing an absolutist administration rationales to infringe on civil liberties. The America that is saved by BushCheney and Rumsfeld will be a diminished America.

Deputy Secretary England distorts his words by seeing only half of the technological capabilities available to terrorists. The other half is the fact that any technological advances that allow Islamic extremists and terrorists to operate globally are matched and exceeded by our own. We can outclass any technology that any potential enemy can access. Terrorists can operate globally because the world is now a global society in which peoples of all nationalities circulate. Communications link nations and individuals together in a world-wide network. That is the one technology that would-be terrorists can exploit to their advantage, as can we. The rest is simply cleverness on their part (box cutters and airplanes) and sloppiness (missing all the clues) on ours.

Neither official spoke directly of the potential state adversaries–China, Russia and India–but the defense review addresses these nations with a new fighter plane, carrier task forces and submarine launched conventional weapons. Here is where I question the premise and utility of military power at all. Our conflicts with these nations will be trade, resources and ideas, none of which are military in nature. The United States looking for the wrong tools to secure its future, a future that I believe is intimately bound up with the other peoples and nations with whom we share this planet. Our best defense in an increasingly interdependent and vulnerable world will be cooperation, understanding and reason, not guns and tanks and bombs.

My superbly rational arguments aside, the Defense budget will grow, creating policy and tools that are self-defining and ultimately self-defeating . America in 2006 is too scared to think straight.