Defending America in the Twenty-first Century

Eliot A. Cohen

From Foreign Affairs, November/December 2000

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Summary:  Despite a vast budget that dwarfs the military spending power of both friends and foes, the U.S. military today remains stuck in the past. American strategy still relies on a Cold War-era view of the world, and U.S. technology is ill-suited to current missions. Meanwhile, demoralization is creeping through the ranks. The next president must seize the opportunity to remake the military by forcing it to focus on the missions of the future rather than those of the past. The alternative -- more of the same -- is too dangerous to consider.

Eliot A. Cohen is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

Last year, the U.S. military looked something like this: it had 1,380,000 troops, a budget of some $279 billion, and featured 10 active Army and three active Marine Corps divisions, about 20 active and reserve air wings, and 11 active aircraft carriers. Its forces drove m-1 tanks, flew F-15 and F-16 fighters and F-117 bombers, and sailed Nimitz-class carriers. They were organized into unified and specified commands, governed primarily by the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986.

Ten years earlier -- with the Soviet Union still standing and the Gulf War soon to begin -- the picture was strangely similar. The U.S. military had slightly over two million troops. With a budget of $382.5 billion (in today's dollars), it had 18 active Army and 3 active Marine Corps divisions, 36 active and reserve air wings, and 14 carriers. Its troops drove m-1 tanks, flew F-15 and F-16 fighters and F-117 bombers, and sailed Nimitz-class carriers. They too were organized into unified and specified commands, governed primarily by the Goldwater-Nichols Act.

To be fair, the Pentagon did make some changes in the interim. The American military presence in Europe shrank to something like a third of its late-Cold War size -- down to roughly 100,000 troops. Some organizations disappeared (most notably the Air Force's nuclear-armed Strategic Air Command), while others expanded in size and influence. Precision-guided missiles and bombs, once a small portion of the arsenal, came to dominate American air campaigns. And in the invisible theater of cyberspace, networks multiplied and the information flow became a torrent.

But despite these alterations, the Defense Department in 2000 closely resembles its predecessor of a decade ago, despite growing insistence by politicians that things must change. "Transformation," and not mere "reform," has become the catchword of the presidential defense debate. Texas Governor George W. Bush, in a keynote defense speech, promised a "revolution" that would "skip a generation of technology"; Vice President Al Gore has declared that the country must "rise to the challenge again -- to transform today's armed forces into tomorrow's Information Age force."

Why such bold rhetoric from both parties? What makes political leaders talk about radical change instead of mere fine-tuning? After all, the U.S. defense establishment has handsomely won several minor wars in recent years, and with astoundingly few casualties. Why overhaul a military feared by former foes and by rising antagonists? Even allies are worried by a Pentagon that spends as much on research and development (some $36 billion per year) as some of them (the United Kingdom, specifically) spend on defense altogether.

Something more than politics or the quest for novelty is at work. The Pentagon suffers from serious, long-term troubles. Although it has just begun to adjust to some of these failings, it remains indifferent to or unaware of others. These problems fall into several categories. The first is strategic. American strategy still relies on a Cold War-derived understanding of military power and fails to focus on ...

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