After twenty long years, the war in Afghanistan is coming to a close. Yet what does the next chapter for the US military look like?
One projection involves an F-35 pilot shot down by Iran and a US naval destroyer sunk by Beijing in the South China Sea. That is the fictional premise behind a new buzzed-about book, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War.
The dismal prospects of how the US military might fare in a future war, whether against China, Iran, or some other enemy, has Pentagon planners, defense manufacturers, and service chiefs bracing for a future that will not be kind to the defense budget. Besides ballooning national deficits, nontraditional national security priorities, and pushback against pricey yet unproven fighters like the F-35, the impact of COVID on the US economy, two separate COVID relief packages, and the proposed “American Jobs Plan” could result in one of the biggest defense budget cuts in modern history.
Read the full article at the Military Times.
John Spencer is the chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute.
Steve Leonard is director of assessments at the University of Kansas School of Business and a senior fellow at the Modern War Institute.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
This is an excellent article, but it goes wrong right at the end.
Yes, missile vs missile, unmanned-ship vs unmanned-ship, and drone vs [anything] engagements won’t decide anything. But they’re not “all sci-fi fantasy;” they’re attritional in a very real sense. While our national leadership peruses disastrous and ruinous financial misadventures, our adversaries know they’ll soon enjoy economic supremacy over the United States. With the exorbitant cost of the new wonder weapons, their prolific use in the opening rounds of a future conflict could disproportionally consume limited resources. So we could end up being checkmated with the opening moves of the pawns.
Directed-energy weapons might serve as a wild card, offering a low cost per shot. But I don’t think they’ll significantly alter the equation. They’re merely another weapon on or in some next-higher level weapons system. And it seems safe to assume such weapons systems won’t be cheap, or invulnerable.
Finally, extreme poverty—where we’re headed—strips away human worth and dignity at every level. Soon we’ll see a grim new solution in the “blood and treasure” calculus, with robots seen as prohibitively expensive. And a starving human carrying a bomb will be worth only the cost of the bomb.
Personally, I don't believe that the Pentagon is looking at the future of conflict broadly and deeply enough. Hubris might be a factor.
First off, THANK YOU for posting such a topic. YES, it IS time for the Pentagon to move ahead from COIN and defend the USA in other ways besides Terrorism and Insurgency. As the saying goes, "Terrorists have to get it correct ONE time. The USA needs to get it correct ALL the time."
So what will the future conflicts and decades bring?
Personally, I think that the peer nations and non-NATO nations will challenge everything that NATO and the DoD stand for. The achievements will be chipped away such as U.S. Air Superiority, no U.S. soldier killed by enemy air power since WW2 (challenge that), and peer nations get better misinformation, better propaganda, better cyber warfare, better flamethrowers, better robotics, better achievements, etc. If one side racks up wins and the other side racks up losses, who will the public want to win?
The problem with the U.S. military is that it has Public Relations problems. The soldiers and Marines are often just kids right out of high school. Peer nations will tote how crime-ridden, dangerous, messed up, Racist, sexist, poor, greedy, rude, backwards, etc. America and Democracy is compared to their nation, culture, values, etc. If a government covers up the bad news and presents only hyped and good news, then the "brainwashing" will work. The U.S. soldier and Marine will be displaced as the "World's police," replaced by PLA and Russian soldiers who are older, more experienced, seasoned, and "lifers." Most U.S. soldiers and Marines and Vets don't share their stories with the public. If National Pride is on one's own gun collection compared to the government and military, then China and Russia will stage a huge Public Relations smiley face!
There will be Social Media coups, such as a PLA SOF soldier stealing a F-35; PLA soldier photographing himself on an Army base; PLA soldier taking a picture at the Mexican Border; PLAN Marine sneaking into a U.S. Navy base; PLAN Marine kissing Miss U.S.A. All these probing Photoshopped photos, weather real or fake, are enough to drive the DoD and Congress nuts if the PLA and PLAN are everywhere that the U.S. DoD isn't. "PLA squad first to Mt. Everest! Beats U.S. Army and U.S. Marines who are still sleeping in bed!"
Then there will be small scale wars where the Russians and Chinese reenter (say) Afghanistan and failed areas where the U.S.A. pulled out. The approach will be heavily mechanized and the Chinese and Russians will invade for profit, mining as much minerals, gems, resources, etc. to take back to the Homeland—a "For profit war." These won't be wars for national defense—these will be wars for exploitation.
As peer nations advance, they will push back the West. If the West fights back, peer nations will resort to environmental wars, terrorism wars, people wars, Hearts and Minds wars, Info-War, Cyber War, space war, undersea war, rape and pillage wars, criminal wars, etc. The GOAL of war is GOALS and THAT is what threatens the West. If future war is for self-defense, than the West has it all wrong because COIN proved that self-defense is relative when it comes to overseas nations….failed states that the U.S.A. failed to settle the differences in tribes, cultures, and people. AGGRESSION and AUDACITY will play a HUGE role in future wars and some may think that the U.S. and NATO aren't aggressive enough (compared to the Chinese fishing fleet where Human life is so worthless when it comes to fish).
A world always on a "war footing" cannot survive well. Recall that this is what lead to fictional Star Trek's first Warp Drive and the encounter with the Vulcans in "Star Trek, First Contact" movie. Humanity survived some sort of apocalyptic war where it got set back in progress and only did Johnny Cochrane build some backyard Warp Drive spaceship flown to Warp One that caught the attention of a Vulcan spaceship in orbit to make "First Contact" with a friendly alien species.
The Western goal should be to PREVENT WW3 from happening first and foremost, but if peer nations are going to war for profit, then that goes back to Vikings, Romans, Spartans, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Mongols, WW2 Germans and Japanese, British Empire, etc…the history of war that West Point studies….and that isn't self-defense.
So CHECK aggression in Humanity. That is the job of the CIA, FBI, HSI, and NSA. America has had over two decades of COIN and should know aggression. If the Chinese and Russians get really aggressive, then the United Nations need to step in, or risk a Star Trek future of war before the first Warp Drive.
From the second-to-last paragraph of our article above:
"When deterrence fails, the introduction of significant ground forces signals an unmistakable level of national commitment and will. Although much has changed since the wars in Korea and Vietnam, one immutable fact remains: conflicts are decided in the land domain, where the will of the people ultimately rests. Any future conflict will inherently involve all the services, but without landpower — namely tanks and troops — to achieve a decisive outcome, we are likely to usher in an era of lengthy and inconclusive wars that are passed on to successive generations."
Questions:
a. Did the Old Cold War of yesterday end (favorably for the U.S./the West it would seem?) by the U.S./the West sending "landpower" — tanks and troops — into the major Soviet/communist lands? Or:
b. Did the Old Cold War of yesterday end (favorably for the U.S./the West it would seem?) with the U.S./the West successfully "painting" the Soviets/the communists as "godless" deviant and pariah states — and, accordingly — as part of an "evil empire?"
(Note that — as relates to my second question above — this is exactly what the Russians [et. al?] are now trying to do to the U.S./the West today; this being to:
a. "Achieve a decisive outcome" [similar to that of the U.S./the West versus the Soviets/the communists in the Old Cold War?]; this:
b. WITHOUT having to send tanks and troops into the U.S./the West itself:
"Russia and the United States are once again becoming screens for each other, on which corresponding actors project some of their own images arising from the internal logic of corresponding societies. The transformation, the inversion of each other’s images that has taken place since the Cold War, is remarkable. During the Cold War, the USSR was perceived by American conservatives as an 'evil empire,' as a source of destructive cultural influences, while the United States was perceived as a force that was preventing the world from the triumph of godless communism and anarchy. The USSR, by contrast, positioned itself as a vanguard of emancipation, as a fighter for the progressive transformation of humanity (away from religion and toward atheism), and against the reactionary forces of the West. Today positions have changed dramatically; it is the United States or the ruling liberal establishment that in the conservative narrative has become the new or neo-USSR, spreading subversive ideas about family or the nature of authority around the world, while Russia has become almost a beacon of hope, 'the last bastion of Christian values' that helps keep the world from sliding into a liberal dystopia. Russia’s self-identity has changed accordingly; now it is Russia who actively resists destructive, revolutionary experiments with fundamental human institutions, experiments inspired by new revolutionary neo-communists from the United States. Hence the cautious hopes that the U.S. Christian right have for contemporary Russia: They are projecting on Russia their fantasies of another West that has not been infected by the virus of cultural liberalism."
[See the December 18, 2019, Georgetown University, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs article "Global Culture Wars from the Perspective of Russian and American Actors: Some Preliminary Conclusions," by Dmitry Uzlaner. Look to the paragraph beginning with "Russia and the United States as screens for each other’s projections."])
Bottom Line Thought — Based on the Above:
A comparison of Afghanistan and Iraq (where tanks and troops WERE sent in but where a decisive outcome WAS NOT realized?) and the Old Cold War (where tanks and troops WERE NOT sent into the Soviet/the communist lands but a decisive outcome [?] WAS realized); this seems to somewhat discredit the value of landpower. Yes?
We lost the cyber propaganda war in 2016 but no one seems that upset. We are beset with cyber attacks that have helped killed tens of thousands of American via propaganda about COVID, yet no one seems that upset. Maybe the very nature of war has changed? BTW– there is no "sci-fi fantasy" genre. It's one of the other. And frankly, science fictions authors have done a very good job predicting the future of warfare. Same with thriller writers.
American, British, and other western people have no interest in war on China, Iran, Russia or any of the other absurd conflicts which are proposed.
Would we be worse off if China, Russia, Iran ruled our countries?
Right now, we are told that white people have no right to be represented. Our interests are secondary to "people of color." People get fired if they don't believe that men can be women, and vice versa. Private companies take away your right to free speech, or right to work (Covid passports), or right to move (vax passports again). Could foreign overlords be so vexatious?