Pentagon Is Likely to Abandon Cold War’s Two-Front Strategy

Without fanfare, the Pentagon is expected to soon abandon a concept that has guided and organized America’s armed forces since the Cold War.

The doctrine provides that the U.S. military should have enough troops and gear to whip two foes the size of Iraq or North Korea in quick succession.

For much of the last decade, critics have complained that the concept was a shortsighted notion that kept America’s generals busy thinking about how to refight the last war.

Yet as the new Pentagon management team assembled by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld completes a sweeping strategic analysis that is expected to recommend a new approach, many in the department are still raising a critical question: Are we sure we can find something better?

The military is, in fact, deeply ambivalent about whether to give up a concept that one officer referred to as “our most comforting national security blanket.”

This stems, in part, from the desire of the services to protect traditional missions and budgets. But it also reflects the reality that in the new century the world’s greatest power is in a deep muddle about how it will fight adversaries that, for the moment, it so dominates.

Will the enemy of the future field familiar conventional forces, such as those of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein? Will there be a larger opponent, such as China, in a fight primarily centered in the air and sea?

No Room for Error

Should the military be tailored to seize and occupy nations, such as Pakistan, whose disintegration could destabilize a region; or to take on multiple simultaneous peacekeeping missions? And how much money should the military divert from other purposes to meet the new threats of chemical, germ and “cyber” weapons?

Pentagon planners know they can’t afford to be wrong.

While the issue sounds abstract, a change would have a huge effect on the services’ roles and budgets.

The Army may have the most at stake because the two-war doctrine supports the need for heavy ground forces. But a change also could lead to a reduced role for large aircraft carriers, or even trim the fighter force that is so dear to the Air Force leadership.

The two-war strategy came about in an earlier moment of uncertainty, as the Soviet Union disappeared and the Pentagon pondered what kind of enemy it would face next. Military planners decided the most serious and realistic risk was that, once they got caught in a war with Iraq, another country, such as North Korea, might be emboldened to open a second front.

As a result, the Pentagon decided that though it was cutting forces by about one-third after the end of the Cold War, it needed to maintain a certain force structure for each of these possible fights. It worked out to roughly four or five Army divisions, four or five Marine brigades, 10 fighter air wings, 50 long-range bombers and five aircraft carrier battle groups, said Michael O’Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan Washington think tank.

The general approach first surfaced in a 1991 military review conducted by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.

Two years later, when Defense Secretary Les Aspin took over at the Pentagon, he hoped America could get by with less. But when he floated a trial balloon suggesting that the military might simply hold one of the adversaries at bay while it took time to beat the other, his idea of “win-hold-win” was ridiculed by some military officials and analysts as “win-hold-oops.”

Aspin eventually declared that he too embraced the “two theater wars concept.” The idea was now firmly entrenched.

Yet over time, it has come under increasing attack by a loose-knit group of military planners, administration officials, members of Congress, nongovernment analysts and think tank experts.

For one thing, Iraq’s shrunken military now bears little resemblance to the million-man force that appeared so threatening at the outbreak of the Persian Gulf War. The North Korean military is also weaker, and the South Korean military stronger, than they were given credit for when the two-war doctrine was put in place.

A New Battlefield

The critics also contend the two-war concept focuses spending on a kind of war that is now far less likely. It assumes scenarios in which the United States would build heavy ground and naval forces over a period of weeks and then--with the advantage of forward bases and air dominance--unleash an intense battle.

But the Persian Gulf War as well as the Kosovo conflict of 1999 have taught adversaries they cannot hope to take on the United States in such a traditional manner. Instead, many defense experts predict they will try to prevent U.S. forces from gaining access to the battle theater by using cheap and powerful missiles, mines and “weapons of mass destruction”--germ and chemical bombs.

If this view proves correct, the United States now needs fewer heavy tanks, artillery units and short-range fighter squadrons. It needs more equipment that can provide speed, stealth and long-range punch: long-distance bombers, precision munitions, pilotless planes and ships that are harder to detect and hit, for example.

Some critics note that the Pentagon hasn’t really lived up to the two-war prescription in any case. They noted that the Joint Chiefs’ readiness reports to Congress have repeatedly acknowledged that it would be an enormous strain on the services to field adequate forces to fight on two fronts.

In 1997, a congressionally appointed commission called the National Defense Panel proposed that the Pentagon abandon the two-war strategy. And last year, a study commissioned by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Henry Hugh Shelton came to some of the same conclusions.

Although the doctrine still has some defenders, the consensus within the Pentagon and the broader defense community seems to be that it will be abandoned, probably within the next month or so.

Michele Flournoy, director of last year’s study, said there was striking agreement among panel members on the need for a new formulation, though they came from a range of backgrounds and perspectives. The participants included several important members of the new administration, such as Richard L. Armitage, now assistant secretary of State, and Dov S. Zakheim, nominated to be undersecretary of Defense and Pentagon comptroller.

In their view, the doctrine focused planning too much on one particular scenario when the military “needs to be robust across a range of threats,” Flournoy said. That is important because, in predicting the emerging threats, American defense planners “have so often been wrong.”

Flournoy, a former Defense Department official, said she would bet “substantial sums of money” that the Rumsfeld team will replace the doctrine.

In part, that is because the Rumsfeld team will want to distinguish itself from the Clinton administration’s approach.

Also, the Rumsfeld team needs a blueprint that allows “wiggle room” for some budget cutting. Even President Clinton’s military budgets were $30 billion to $50 billion below what they would have needed to be to carry out the two-war strategy, she said.

So far, President Bush has not stated a preference on the two-war doctrine, although he has indicated a general desire to reform the military. Rumsfeld, too, has only spoken in the broadest terms about the need for a new direction. But several members of Rumsfeld’s management team are advocates of aggressive reform, and have made it clear they want to ditch the old paradigm.

Yet military officials and analysts close to the discussions say it has not been easy to develop a new strategy or abandon the old.

Some analysts maintain that fighting two wars is something the United States still needs to be able to do as part of its role as a superpower. And others, including some influential members of Congress, fear that jettisoning the two-war standard will open the door for a further downsizing of the military.

“There’s a fear of free fall,” said Daniel Goure, a former Defense Department official now at Lexington Institute, a defense research concern in Virginia.