The US defense strategy, from insolvency to bankruptcy?

The RAND Corporation, the architect of the most important economic and military strategies of the United States and NATO for more than seven decades, recently published an analysis that calls into question America's ability to maintain its assumed capacity as a security provider for allies and defense of the "rules-based global order".

The subject addressed is the defense strategy of the United States, which urgently needs to be rethought, given that "it has become increasingly clear that the current US defense strategy and position have become insolvent."

Published in July 2023 under the title "Inflection Point: How to Reverse the Erosion of U.S. and Allied Military Power and Influence," the RAND Corporation study is available at https://tinyurl.com/28t2x2jj.

The authors stress the fact that "the US military enjoyed an enviable success against the armed forces of other nations" after the end of the Cold War in 1991, but subsequent developments, such as China's economic boom and military modernization or "the use of towards Russia of military aggression", were marked by converging trends that reached maturity and sent the US defense strategy into "bankruptcy".

The ideas presented "are based on the conviction that, for Americans and the other approximately two billion people living in the world's democratically governed nations, there is no acceptable alternative to the deep engagement of the United States in global affairs," and the adoption of measures based on them could lead to the maintenance of this status-quo.

From the beginning, the RAND document shows that in the new international security environment, in which the capabilities of adversaries change rapidly, there is a risk that the authorities will not understand and prepare for future challenges, and thus "the nation becomes vulnerable".

While acknowledging that "we are not entirely surprised when our findings and recommendations fail to gain traction in official circles," the authors hope that the ideas and proposals presented will help "stimulate action to address long-standing defense deficiencies." .

The US defense strategy followed since the end of the Cold War involves sending a strong expeditionary force anywhere in the world to counter any aggression against American interests.

This strategy has always had a major deficiency, which has only now become evident, in the conditions where "the strategy was based on superior American military forces in all areas, regardless of the adversary", as shown in the introductory part.

In the new reality, "superiority has disappeared, certainly with regard to China, but also with regard to the forces of other less powerful adversaries, and it will not return", according to the RAND analysis, a phenomenon explained by the fact that " The United States and its allies no longer have a monopoly on the technologies and capabilities that ensured their dominance against the forces of nations such as Iraq, Serbia and Afghanistan."

The new approach to defense strategy proposed by the RAND Corporation, dubbed "Defense without dominance", is based on four main elements.

The first is the way in which the American forces present themselves in Europe, but especially in the Western Pacific. Currently, it is considered inadequate from at least two points of view, namely "these forces do not have sufficient combat power to take the initiative from China or a reconstituted Russia" and "their bases are too vulnerable to precise attacks with salvos of ballistic and cruise missiles".

It seems that the RAND analysts also discovered what the military analyst Andrei Martyanov, a former officer in the Navy of the Soviet Union, presented at length in his books "Losing Military Supremacy: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning" (Clarity Press, 2018) and "The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs" (Clarity Press, 2019), where he describes, including through systems of equations, the implications of saturating enemy positions with missile salvos, against the background of an extraordinary intensity of electronic warfare.

In his books, Martyanov also emphasizes the special importance of the real economic capacity of a country, represented by the processing, energy and extractive industry, as well as the extraordinary importance of education in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

o correct the "inadequate posture" of military forces, planners of the new strategy must find ways to bring combat capability to contested spaces faster than during the Cold War, RAND analysts write, while reducing exposure to precision attacks.

The second main element in is the change in the way in which the detection of the enemy is done and the directing of forces to the theater of operations.

"Too many of the systems that U.S. forces currently rely on to build a dynamic picture of the battlespace will not be able to function effectively in the new environment," the report states, because this environment is characterized, among other things, by " multi-level air defenses, cyber warfare and electronic jamming".

Regarding the third main element, the ability to strike, the current situation is illustrated with the help of the Gulf War of the early 1990s, when almost 2,000 coalition aircraft were deployed about 1,000 km from enemy territory.

This was possible then, because "the Iraqi air force did not rise to the level of the American forces, and Iraq had few short- and medium-range missiles, which also had a low degree of accuracy."

"Repeating such a procedure against an adversary like China, which has thousands of high-precision missiles, would be a disaster," the RAND document states, warning that "US forces have made little progress in developing and putting into operation a viable alternative".

The last basic element presented in the report is "asymmetric attrition", i.e. the ability of American and allied forces to defend their territories, simultaneously with the pursuit and destruction of enemy forces, under the conditions that this should be done at cost and with controllable risks.

The authors point out that "US and allied forces cannot count on having the time necessary to deploy in theater and fight for dominance in key areas before engaging the enemy's large-scale invasion force ".

The report includes sections in which the current action capabilities of NATO members are presented, but also the ability to adapt to the defense strategy proposed by the RAND Corporation for the United States.

In the case of Romania, the document states that "progress towards the creation of a modern and balanced armed forces has been hindered by irregular funding, political unrest, corruption and staff shortages" (p. 131), and the current situation is marked by " the high dependence on old equipment of Soviet origin".

The report does not specify to what extent the situation can be improved by moving from dependence on old Soviet equipment to dependence on old equipment of Western origin, as in the case of F-16 planes, Abrams tanks or Patriot anti-aircraft systems.

Despite these major shortcomings, the RAND report claims that "Romania has proven to be a reliable, capable and well-integrated ally in NATO", especially under the conditions of the adoption of a new defense strategy, which "tries to address these shortcomings, including by ensuring a multi-year financing".

In March 2023, former investment banker David Goldman wrote an article in the Asia Times entitled "Why Ukraine may embrace China's peace plan", in which he pointed out that "the United States is losing its influence catastrophically by underestimating Russia", and "the most good policy is an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine".

In his opinion, although such a call from the authorities in Washington "would be a humiliation for the USA", this humiliation is considered "healthy".

"Vietnam did the United States a favor by humiliating it before Russia", because "the disaster in Vietnam made possible a complete rethinking of the US defense strategy and the final victory of America in the Cold War", is the conclusion of the article signed by David Goldman in Asia Times.

Now the RAND Corporation comes up with proposals for the exit from the "insolvency" of the defense strategy of the United States.

But what if it is too late for a fundamental restructuring to avoid "bankruptcy", given that the report emphasizes that neither the current forces nor the programs of the US Department of Defense show the necessary capacity for the transition to a new defense strategy?