Now, who is this almost-octogenarian, Andrew W. Marshall? (NYT) May 17, 2001
Pentagon Review Puts Emphasis on Long-Range Arms in Pacific
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
WASHINGTON, May 16 — A confidential Pentagon strategy review has cast the Pacific as the most important region for military planners and calls for the development of new long-range arms to counter China's military power.
The review concludes that American bases in the Pacific are likely to become increasingly vulnerable as China and other potential adversaries develop more accurate missiles.
So it urges that the American military become less dependent on military bases and put more emphasis on fighting from a distance.
The review is part of a broad effort by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to transform the military after the cold war, a shift that would redirect the focus of American military planning from Europe to Asia.
It is directed by Andrew W. Marshall, a 79-year-old civilian analyst at the Pentagon and a close adviser to Mr. Rumsfeld, who has long pressed for a radical overhaul of America's armed forces.
But in the Pacific, the review has drawn a skeptical response from Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the head of the United States Pacific Command and the top American military man in the region.
While supporting the call for change, Admiral Blair believes China will present less of a military threat to American military bases and naval forces in the region. Military officers in the region are also concerned that the diminished importance of bases close to the action in a new Pentagon strategy could also make it harder for the United States to maintain political support in Japan and South Korea for a continued American presence there.
"I think we have the tools to keep both air and naval power anywhere we want to in the theater and can for some quite time," Admiral Blair said in an interview last week at his Pacific headquarters in Honolulu.
"If you want to look at serious forces designed to keep the U.S. out of part of the world, look at what the Russians did in the 70's — dozens of submarines, hundreds of long-range bombers, dozens of satellites, lots of practice," Admiral Blair added. "That was a serious system which we were going to have a hard time fighting our way through. Nobody in Asia is even close to that."
The stark differences between the Pentagon's most futuristic analyst and the military's top officer in the Pacific is part of a broad-range debate over the future of the military that is being carried out behind closed doors. Supporters of Mr. Marshall, who has urged a "revolution in military affairs," often cast the military as hide-bound. But many in the military see Mr. Marshall as too divorced from the day-to-day realities of operating forces in the world, and too much enamored of high technology.
Mr. Rumsfeld has sent drafts of the review to the chiefs of the military services and senior American military commanders around the world for comment. A senior Pentagon official said that the strategy was being adapted in light of their comments, but that key themes about the potential threat to American bases and the need for long- range systems have been preserved.
Mr. Rumsfeld plans to preview the main tenets of the Pentagon's thinking to Congress next week. President Bush may follow up when he addresses the United States Naval Academy several days later.
With a Chinese military buildup near Taiwan and an unsteady peace on the Korean Peninsula, it is not surprising that the Pacific has become the most important region for American military planners.
"That is where all the challenges and threats lie," said a senior Defense Department official.
Certainly, no headquarters faces tougher challenges than the United States Pacific Command. It oversees military deployments and exercises and plans military operations in a region that spans 105 million square miles and includes 43 nations.
The command is responsible for the defense of Japan and South Korea. And if President Bush gave the go-ahead, it would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack.
Increasingly, much of the command's work also involves efforts to strengthen ties with other militaries in the region. Last year, the command conducted 300 exercises with 37 countries. Military officials say such programs are important not only to maintain stability in the Pacific but also to encourage new patterns of cooperation in which other nations can take the lead in peacekeeping, as was the case in East Timor.
And the command does so using only a relative handful of overseas bases and 100,000 troops in South Korea, Japan and at sea. Another 200,000 troops of the command's troops are stationed in Alaska, Hawaii and the continental United States.
Under Admiral Blair's tutelage, a number of moves are under way to strengthen the American military posture in the Pacific. The Navy plans to move three submarines to Guam. The Air Force has already stored conventional-armed cruise missiles on Guam, the only site outside the continental United States where they are stored.
Admiral Blair has also proposed that American aircraft carriers spend a week or two in the Western Pacific on their way to the Persian Gulf and back, according to Navy officers. Another aircraft carrier, the Kitty Hawk, operates from Japan. So this would temporarily increase the American naval presence in the region, a step Singapore has encouraged by building a new dock for aircraft carriers.
But the review overseen by Mr. Marshall is far more radical.
The conclusions of Mr. Marshall's review are contained in a paper on "Defense Strategy Review." It highlights the importance of Asia and it notes the challenges the United States faces in operating region: the vast distances, sparse structure of military bases and the slow but steady Chinese military buildup.
The basic analysis in the review comes down to this: Adversaries like China are developing new longer- range weapons, like surface-to-surface missiles, as well as chemical weapons and biological weapons. That will create a serious new threat to military bases and aircraft carriers in the region, a problem the Pentagon has dubbed "access denial."
The United States, the review maintains, should develop missile defenses. Even so, however, it will be compelled to operate its naval and air forces further away from the Chinese mainland and fight at a greater distance.
Using business school terms, the review talks about the need to develop America's "core competence" in several key areas: long-range missiles, space operations, a navy capable of operating on the high seas, and transport planes to move men and material in a crisis. The United States would strive to be so dominant in these areas as to "lock out" any competition.
One purpose of the strategy review is to establish a framework for developing new weapons systems. Officials familiar with the strategy review say it implicitly encourages the development of long-range warplanes, new long-range precision- guided weapons, the purchase of more aerial refueling tankers and the use of hard-to-target weapons like submarines.
It also means that the American military would have to find new ways of operating in the field. For example, the American military would not be able to keep large quantities of supplies within range of enemy missiles.
"When you insert forces you have to deploy and operate in a way that produces fewer targets," said a senior Defense Department official who is familiar with the review. "You cannot build up large stockpiles of support equipment. So we should try to have forces that require less support and to supply them in new ways."
But Admiral Blair and other senior military officers in the Pacific have a very different perspective. While Mr. Marshall and his supporters tend to look at the distant future, Admiral Blair has called for a more step-by-step approach in setting new military requirements and developing weapons systems.
The key strategic questions, however, are how serious the threat is to American bases and aircraft carriers and how the United States should respond to that threat.
Admiral Blair, like many officers interviewed in the Pacific, said it would be very difficult for the Chinese to attack American bases and naval forces in the Pacific. The Chinese, he said, not only need to develop long-range missiles, but also the reconnaissance and communications systems to target them.
"It is not just a question of the range of the missile," he said. "It is a tough, tough problem. It has to with surveillance systems, the ability to get information back and the corrections you have to make mid-course."
The United States, Admiral Blair adds, could blunt the threat to American bases and aircraft carriers near the Chinese coast by knocking out China's reconnaissance and communications systems. The United States is not compelled to wage war from further away.
"The Chinese do not have an over- the-horizon target system that is capable of hitting U.S. forces and there are many, many countermeasures to all of the aspects of that kind of system which are available," Admiral Blair said. "I think that using this projection of what the Chinese are now doing as a rationale for the U.S. having to flow back out of Asia is just wrong. I think the forces we have can operate there."
Admiral Blair said that he had asked for some new systems, but his list is very different from that singled out by Mr. Marshall. The emphasis is on command and control and surveillance, not high-tech weapons for long-range strikes.
And while Mr. Marshall's strategy review recommends that the Pentagon should place more focus on possible confrontations with major powers, which in the Pacific means China, Admiral Blair takes a broader view of the American military and puts more emphasis on allies.
In addition to preparing for war, he and other officers in the region stress, the American armed forces can help defuse tensions by interacting with other militaries in the region, he says. He has also argued that the political outcome in China is not determined.
"The ultimate business of the U.S. military is to make it a place where Americans can trade, travel and interact in peaceful ways," he said, referring to the Pacific. "That is, build on an alliance structure."