The Lure of Strike (2013)

ABSTRACT: An increasingly important part of the new American Way of War has been a reliance on standoff technology to project power. The lure is minimal friendly casualties and short, inexpensive wars with only limited landpower commitments. Unfortunately, inflated expectations for such an outcome have often led to strategic overreach and a dangerously unbalanced force structure, ultimately costing the nation more blood and treasure. As the United States tries to refocus its strategy and reduce defense expenditures, it must be careful to retain a balanced force with a full range of capabilities. ********** There are two approaches to waging war, asymmetric and stupid. very competent belligerent looks for an edge over its adversaries. No country is more asymmetric in warfighting than the United States. An increasingly important part of the new American Way of War has been a reliance on stand-off technology to project power, with a promise of reduced friendly casualties and short, tidy wars with limited landpower commitments. Unfortunately, this predilection has often led to strategic overreach and a dangerously unbalanced force structure, eventually costing the nation much in blood and treasure. Buoyed by the popular seapower theories of Alfred Thayer Mahan, and a new maritime strategy to exploit an expanding industrial base, the US Navy in 1898 showed itself to be a world-class force. In February of that year, Assistant Secretary of the Navy and ardent expansionist Theodore Roosevelt took advantage of an afternoon while his boss was away to order his Asiatic Squadron to wartime readiness. When war was declared against Spain in April, Admiral George Dewey sailed for Manila, where on I May 1898 his modern flotilla systematically destroyed Spanish naval power in the Pacific, suffering only one dead and nine wounded in the process. Though official planning had envisioned the Philippines as only a secondary theater, Dewey cabled for land forces to exploit his success. For tenure of the land you must have the man with the rifle, he stated, as Spanish forces still controlled the capital and the rest of the islands. (1) The McKinley administration scrambled to mobilize soldiers to send to the Pacific. Already stretched by requirements for campaigns in the Caribbean, the Army was forced to cull together another 20,000 volunteers and regulars under the of Major General Wesley Merritt. They arrived in the Philippines during the summer, soon launching combat operations to secure Manila. By the time the Philippine-American War ended in 1902, as many as 125,000 American troops had participated, far more than in the projected main theater in the Caribbean; over 4,000 had died. (2) Mahan and his seapower theories, along with burgeoning economic interests, inspired American leaders to modernize and expand the Navy, creating a technological impetus for an ambitious strategy during the Spanish-American War that did not pay adequate attention to landpower requirements. The invention of the airplane would bring more of the same. The earliest coherent body of airpower theory was created by the Italian Giulio Douhet. He advocated that nations invest their defense resources primarily in an independent service that would first achieve command of the air over an opponent's territory and then win wars quickly by bombing cities until panicked civilians forced their government to capitulate. (3) American airmen in the 1930s, however, developed a different approach based on the promise of precision attacks. Studying New York City as a model, they concluded that destroying only seventeen targets within its transportation, water, and electrical systems would render the city uninhabitable without mass casualties. They expanded their war-winning theory to exploiting key vulnerabilities in the economies of industrialized nations and developed the precision-bombing concept that has shaped the evolution and application of American airpower ever since. …