# The Next Enemy

Author: Martin C. Libicki, Senior
Fellow

Note:

Conclusions

Recommendations

About the Workshop

Discussion

The Cold War offered military planners considerable
strategic clarity the threat was known, and the problem
was generating a force structure of sufficient size and
sophistication to counter it. Today's military threats are
varied and, for the most part, well below the level that
even a shrinking U.S. force can handle comfortably.
Threats ten to twenty years out, however, must be taken
seriously because of the long time required to complete
a major systems acquisition; to develop, test, and
institutionalize new doctrine; and to accomplish the
organizational innovations necessary to use both
effectively.

Future threats may be divided into four categories:
peers, bullies, terrorism, and chaos.  The threat
environment twenty years hence is unlikely to be of one
type.  Nevertheless, framing the choices facing planners
shows what the U.S. armed forces might look like if one
or another type of threat were to become the
predominant focus of the Defense Department.

Peers

Few planners think it likely that the next twenty
years will see a reemergence of a nation that can pose a
challenge to U.S. military power as broadly as the Soviet
Union did.  However, at least two countries (Russia and
China) could  conceivably be peer adversaries at the
strategic level of nuclear weapons, space, and
information systems. Others could come close. How
should the United States respond to the possibility?
     One avenue of interaction is to use arms controls to
manage the cost of competition and the consequences of
interstate breakdown. New restrictions on land warfare
(e.g., tagging heavy equipment, placing sensors in
border areas, putting size limitations on ground forces)
would benefit the United States, given its compact army.
On the other hand, some participants agreed that some of
today's arms control regimes should be rolled back.
Many felt that the United States is overly restricted in
space and that a more permissive ABM regime would
serve U.S. interests. Yet if the world's superpower
stepped away from mutual arms limitations, this might
send the wrong message about U.S. intentions and
complicate counter-proliferation efforts.

Another avenue of future competition may be
information warfare. Can or should the United States
hold other nations' participation in the world economy at
risk? The United States might be able to shut down
another nation's banking system but not without risk of
collateral damage to the global banking system. Can
physical war be replaced by a survival contest among
rival information systems under attack? Perhaps the
United States should concentrate on developing defensive
systems. The United States has the biggest stones, but
also the most glass in its house.

What can the United States do to deter peer-level
competition? Perceptions management was held to be key
to U.S. national security. Most believed that the stronger
and more capable the United States showed itself to be,
the less often it would be challenged by others. Yet, with
coalitions unstable, a demonstration of U.S. power might
persuade others to ally themselves against what they
would perceive as their leading threat (e.g., German
behavior between 1890 and 1914).

A world of peer strategic competition would drive
the military in familiar directions towards: nuclear
forces, satellites and other long-range warning systems;
tactical ballistic missile defense systems (including for
allies); perhaps strategic defense systems and space
attack systems; air defense in general; information
warfare and security; and robust command-and-control.

Bullies

If the circumstances and logic of the Bottom Up
Review hold true for two more decades, U.S. armed
forces will be sized and structured primarily to engage in
two simultaneous major regional contingencies (MRCs).
     The usual suspects in such MRCs (e.g., Iran, Iraq,
North Korea) are presently unsophisticated rogue states
that aspire to nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
Conference participants believe that U.S. forces could
cope with the challenges of future conventional warfare,
even if force levels continue to diminish. However, two
events would make the United States rethink its strategy 
nuclear weapons proliferation, and the sophisticated
exploitation of world technology markets.

The presence of nuclear weapons is likely to alter the
U.S. approach to MRCs. Cold War deterrence was
stable because both sides understood the rules of the
game rules that new nuclear states may not accept.
Should the United States say what circumstances warrant
a nuclear response or leave distinctions fuzzy? Many war
game participants hesitate to retaliate in kind following
a nuclear strike even against U.S. forces. It is less likely
that the United States would retaliate against chemical or
biological weapons by nuclear means. If the United
States forgoes retaliation by weapons of mass destruction
(WMD), would U.S. conventional warfighting
capabilities provide sufficient deterrence?

Geography suggests that many threats from WMDs
will be directed against U.S. allies before they are
directed against the United States (e.g., by radical
Islamic states against southern Europe, by North Korea
against a wavering Japan). The United States has a range
of systems it could offer allies. Yet, with future alliances
inherently uncertain, careful judgements must be made
about how much ballistic and theater missile defense
technology the United States can prudently transfer.

Alternatively, an MRC opponent may be able to
avoid going to the nuclear threshold by a strategy which
uses smart munitions, commercial command-and-control,
and a variety of surveillance technologies (e.g.,
unmanned aerial vehicles, third-party satellite
surveillance) to exact damaging casualties on U.S.
forces. The United States has two major asymmetries to
consider in conflicts that do not affect its national
security directly. One is a longer logistics chain; the
other is sensitivity to casualties.

The American public has grown increasingly
reluctant to shed American blood (or even enemy
blood as the CNN-fed reaction to Iraqi casualties
suggests). In a violent world, how might that limit the
U.S. military; might it be judged solely by casualties?
So-called non-lethal technologies offer scant relief since
many can kill. Even information warfare can kill if it
disables critical societal systems. History suggests that
warfare is inevitably violent and ugly, and the lethality
of weapons will continue to rise.

Many war games analyze whether new technology
will let the United States refight the Gulf War more
efficiently; few refight the Vietnam War to see if
technology makes the United States more effective under
those circumstances.

If the U.S. armed forces were shaped to conduct
MRCs alone, it would initially look much like today's
with an emphasis on heavy maneuver forces, combat
naval groups, and air power. Against a foe with nuclear
or other weapons of mass destruction, the United States
would have to think about operational innovations that
minimize and disperse its logistics, command, and
combat infrastructures; some of them would have to
work from long stand-off ranges. Against a sophisticated
regional foe, the United States might not want to use
platforms at all but rely on a combination of stand-off
attack forces, and information-based warfare assets (for
giving targeting data to local coalition partners), coupled
with special operations forces used for liaison and other
tasks.

Terrorism

Largely because of the limited capability that
classical military instruments have in coping with
terrorism, conference participants kept returning to the
threat that it may pose to U.S. national security.
Incidents may range from the use of conventional
explosives (e.g., what if the van in the World Trade
Center explosion had been parked in a more vulnerable
spot), to nuclear or chemical weapons, biological agents,
and their analogue in cyberspace information warfare.

Devices that can cause terror are getting easier to
manufacture and transport and harder to detect. The
equipment for replicating biological agents is
inexpensive; the equipment for replicating computer
agents is even cheaper. Many otherwise third-world
Asian nations have very large computer-literate cohorts
that make them potential information warfare powers.

Understanding terrorism as an act of war is
complicated by two connections: between the act and the
individual or group that commits the act, and between
the perpetrators and a state or proto-state (e.g., guerilla
groups). Even when organizations come forward to claim
responsibility, it is not always easy to convict individuals
on the basis of judicial-quality evidence. Perpetrators
may or may not be supported by foreign governments,
but the focus is on the actors not the sponsors.
Retaliation by the United States against sponsor
governments is problematic; thus, so is deterrence.

The lack of links between terrorism and a state also
work in reverse. A nation or even an organization cannot
easily use terrorism to coerce others if it cannot show it
can cause specific acts to happen or prevent them from
happening.

What would the U.S. military look like if the
primary threat to U.S. national security were terrorism?
Crime prevention and prosecution is not considered a
military role although some functions may be usefully
assigned for special forces. Maintenance of domestic
order (e.g., in the aftermath of an attack) would be a
higher priority and the United States might even have
forces that could be lent to allies for similar missions. In
some cases (e.g., state-sponsored information warfare)
the United States might want a cohort that can retaliate
in kind. There should also be robust ability to retaliate
with conventional measures (e.g., the 1986 air strike into
Libya).

Chaos

Over the next two decades, states will continue to
fail. Some failures may create circumstances (e.g.,
refugees, malcontents, and environmental damage) which
topple other states. To cope, the United States may need
a robust capability to conduct peace and relief
operations.

What will DOD's role be in peace operations? The
U.S. military has become the jack-of-all-trades for peace
operations an overextended role according to some
conference participants. Several would have U.S. forces
collaborate more closely with civilian agencies. Others
would improve interoperability with NGOs (non-governmental 
organizations) letting the latter do more of the humanitarian 
work that the military does now. Duties
associated with sanctions could be given to non-military
units. Alternatively, specific units (e.g., from the Special
Operations Command) could be tasked with peace
operations. The rest of the military, freed from this
mission, would refocus on deterring and conducting
warfare.

A concentration on peace operations may also be a
good reason to expand foreign military interactions.
Improving interoperability with future coalition partners
carries many advantages. Yet, above a certain
technological level of integration, the risk of exposing
information on U.S. capabilities to what may be
temporary allies has to be carefully managed.

If countering chaos were the primary mission of the
U.S. armed forces, then they would have to become
lighter and more mobile (because states often fail with
little warning, and the United States usually responds
only in extremis). The Army and Marine Corps would
have larger roles, while the Navy and Air Force would
focus on lift. As emergency operations become the norm,
some functions assigned to reserve units may have to be
shifted to active ones (e.g., to allow civil affairs assets
to be used more frequently).