A Progressive Blueprint for Obama’s Military

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A Progressive Blueprint for Obama’s Military
Think Tank Report Outlines Liberal Spending and Policy Ideals
By Spencer Ackerman 12/11/08 9:03 AM


Iraqi insurgents use palm groves like this one to make conventional warfare difficult for U.S. forces. (army.mil)


Just as President-elect Barack Obama’s key defense aides conduct a policy review at the Pentagon, a new report from the Center for American Progress lays out a progressive agenda for both military policy and defense budgeting for the next several years.

The report largely embraces the tenets about the future of warfare put forth by a rising generation of counterinsurgency theorist-practitioners emerging from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It explicitly mentions the military’s “decisive effort to capture the lessons learned in both theatres,” referring to recent doctrinal publications like the counterinsurgency and stability operations field manuals. “You’ve got to give priority to irregular warfare,” said Lawrence Korb, a former Reagan Pentagon official and leading contributor to the report.

Just as important, the report, “Building a Military for the 21st Century,” singles out obsolete or cost-ineffective weapons platforms for elimination. On its chopping block are the Navy’s DDG-1000 destroyer, the Air Force’s F-22 Raptor, the Air Force and Marine Corps’ Osprey helicopter, among other programs. Writing that the defense budget requires precision and prioritization, the report’s authors urge that the military slow the pace of the Army’s sprawling Future Combat Systems modernization program and most missile-defense programs. They estimate a savings of nearly $25 billion over four years from their proposed cuts and reductions — and rejects the idea, embraced by Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, that the U.S. ought to permanently allocate at least 4 percent of its gross domestic product to defense spending.

The principal recommendation from the Center for American Progress is that a comprehensive defense policy requires a clear set of priorities — something the Pentagon never had during the Bush administration, when military spending ballooned and few programs were cut or slowed down. (A notable exception is the Army’s crusader artillery system, which former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld slashed on the merits and to assert control over the Army.) Prioritization requires an argument about what the threats of the near-future look like. And there, the report endorses much of the counterinsurgency agenda. “It is increasingly likely that, in this post-9/11 world, U.S. troops will more frequently be assigned to non-traditional warfare tasks, including both kinetic and non-kinetic counterinsurgency operations, rather than full-scale conventional wars with near-peer competitors,” it states.

Mackenzie Eaglen, a former speechwriter for Gen. Richard Myers, a recent chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and a former aide to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), said the proposal is in line with Gates’ stated emphasis on irregular warfare. Now a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, Eaglen said she approved of the report’s focus on irregular warfare, “as long as it’s not a zero-sum game” with conventional military capabilities. “We can’t acquire {irregular capability} at the expense of conventional ones, but we can certainly do more in the arena of irregular warfare,” she added.

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http://washingtonindependent.com/21797/cap-military-policy