Current Events:

2006 Quadrennial Defense Review 101 and You

By Bill R. French
Courier Staff

In truth, “military intelligence” could not be further from an oxymoron. For those that beg to differ, I challenge you to make sense of the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) released February 6. The document is required to be submitted to Congress on behalf of the Pentagon once every four years.

The 113 page report promulgates a grand strategy for evolving US defense policy in order to most effectively confront current and potential global threats. Pundits widely consider the report to be among the most single influential white papers in guiding American foreign policy. The QDR itself is not a complete roadmap to Washington’s foreign policy by any means, but is perhaps the best document to understand what roles the Department of Defense (DoD) plans to assume. Given the emphasis on military arrangements in US foreign policy in addition to the very substantial influence the Pentagon enjoys in the formulation of American foreign policy, every responsible American citizen aught to be familiar with the essence of the Quadrennial Defense Review.

The 2006 QDR emphasizes that current US military capabilities must be significantly altered and expanded to respond to the international environment. The document’s analysis addresses two central developments in our modern world that require policy shifts.

The first characteristic that increasingly defines our world is the threat embodied in non-state actors such as terrorists and the networks that support them. For self evident reasons, terrorism is a threat to American and international security. Additionally, the Quadrennial Defense Review notes that terrorism is a threat because of its opposition to international economic and civil development. “Such terrorist networks” the report begins, “oppose globalization and the expansion of the freedom it brings.”

Victory in the War on Terrorism – which the QDR curiously renames the Long War – “requires the creation of a global environment inhospitable to terrorism.” Actualizing – or what the report calls ‘operationalizing’ – this strategy requires both military and non-military means. Militarily, the report calls for the acceleration of a process that began during the Clinton years: revolutionizing military affairs (RMA). Although RMA was a guiding force in transforming the US military pre-2001, 9/11 produced a consensus that RMA must be implemented with urgency.

Simply put, RMA prescribes that American Armed forces must be restructured to deal with multiple weak rogue states such as Iran instead of a single powerful Soviet Bloc and non-state actors such as terrorists networks. These engagements will be comparatively low in intensity and unpredictable unlike the massive conventional wars planned for during the cold war which could be more easily foreseen. This equates to a US military more agile in its deployments and capable of multiple simultaneous engagements. Although this demands a lighter, less heavily armed fighting force, high degrees of lethality would be maintained by superior intelligence and informationalization. By informationalization it is meant that US armed forces could integrate superior intelligence and other combat-pertinent information into battlefield operations through sophisticated computer and communication systems.

The non-military means mentioned within the QDR aim at preventing and rolling back the conditions in which terrorism thrives. This includes denying terrorist networks readily accessible safe heavens such as failed states like Sudan and Somalia where legitimate political authority has descended into warlordism and lawlessness. Also, this means goodwill toward Washington must be generated to ensure “extremist ideologies are discredited in the eyes of [the terrorists] host populations and tacit supporters”. In the case of the later, the report suggests further humanitarian operations like what is presently talking place in Georgia, the Trans-Sahara, Columbia and the type of relief that was seen in the wake of the catastrophic Asian tsunami.

Second, the Quadrennial Defense Review addresses the changing global power balance. It explicitly mentions the geopolitical ascendancy of India and China as well as the resurgence of Russian power. The strategy offered by the QDR to accommodate these potential threats is to “ensure that [these] major powers are integrated as constructive actors and stakeholders into the international system.”

The report believes each of the three nations to be at a strategic crossroads where they must soon determine the nature of their relationship to the United States. The QDR advises America should guide or “shape” these nation’s decisions, by coercion if need be. The nature of geopolitical coercion as well as the potential that these decisions may not be successfully “shaped” necessitates that the US retain its military prowess in conventional wars as well.

The report mandates that traditional US advantages must be furthered and new capabilities created in order to maintain conventional military preeminence. The traditional military advantages include space operations (e.g. intelligence satellites), precision guided munitions, stealth technology, the ability to project power globally, and superior personnel training. New areas of capabilities that must be developed are both defensive and offensive.

Defensively, America must be prepared to counter ballistic missile threats, sophisticated conventional weaponry, and asymmetric warfare such as cyber-warfare and other unorthodox tactics. Offensively, the US must further its ability to project power globally, maintain superior guided munitions, continue to develop advantages in stealth technology, and keep steady if not enhance the training of personnel.

In the past years, the United States adopted a doctrine of military “full-spectrum dominance”. Full-spectrum dominance posits the US aught to be militarily dominant in all areas of military affairs. The 2006 QDR unequivocally, albeit implicitly, expands the notion of full-spectrum dominance to include non-state actors such as terrorism. Since conventional and irregular military operations have notably different demands, the American armed forces must then in effect be masters of two games instead of one.

This explains the DoD’s budgetary request of $439.3 billion for fiscal year 2007. Although this only represents an approximately five percent increase in defense spending, it excludes the $120 billion the Pentagon has announced it will separately request to fund its ongoing campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. Collectively, Washington is anticipated to spend nearly more on defense than the rest of the world combined!

Ultimately, there is a broad and pervasive theme in the QDR that is not to be missed. That is the same theme that can be found in this column: globalization. Both the causes of terrorism and the ascension of new global powers (most applicably India and China) are inextricably linked to globalization. Terrorists, as aforementioned, are given impetus with their objection to globalization. The accruement of Indian and Chinese power derives from their growing successful and profitable integration into the globalized economy. Additionally, the QDR’s underlying belief that the United States must engage these problems rather than isolate itself from them is in large part because globalization itself makes isolation impossible.

The implications of the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review are steep whether they are positive or negative, good or bad. Let me remind you that there are several Soviet produced 20 kiloton suitcase nuclear weapons unaccounted for and the United States is the most hated nation in the world. Also, to be sure, empires collapse from over extension and some still do believe in Hell as punishment for earthly sins. Somewhere in this mess you have your place, and if you have read this then you can no longer plead ignorance. As eloquently written in 1943 by Stefan Zweig reflecting on the 20th century to that date, “. . . each succeeding day that dawns outside our window can smash our life. Not even in their darkest nights was it possible for them to dream how dangerous man can be, or how much power he has to withstand dangers and overcome trials.” He continues by writing, “Every hour of our years was bound up with the world’s destiny.”