Success in Afghanistan Clouds Military Transformation Plan

For weeks, analysts in Washington have wondered whether the military success in Afghanistan will give President Bush more leverage to advance his domestic agenda. But the real question, following Bush’s speech Tuesday at the Citadel, may be whether the triumph gives him more clout to advance his defense agenda.

During a 1999 visit to the Citadel, Bush delivered one of the defining promises of his presidential campaign: a pledge to radically transform the military into a leaner, more agile “Information Age” fighting force. But before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, that effort had virtually hit the wall, stalemated by opposition from the famed iron triangle of the Pentagon, the defense industry and Congress.

Now, Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld are hoping the lightning progress in Afghanistan will help them shatter that resistance. On Tuesday, Bush argued that the success of new tactics and new weapons in the war against the Taliban should give the push for sweeping reform new momentum.

But the military’s very success in Afghanistan may allow traditionalists to argue that the massive change Bush seeks is not needed.

“Militaries change because they lose wars or win them with difficulty,” cautioned John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a private defense analysis firm. “They do not change when they win wars without hardly even trying.” Change was the central message of Bush’s first speech at the Citadel in September 1999. As a candidate, he urged big changes in everything from military pay to the way the Pentagon plans for the future. But as president, he’s found it easier to advance some of those new ideas than others.

Bush has continued to push forward on several of the major proposals in his first speech. He’s won funding to increase military pay. He is pressing for rapid deployment of a missile defense system--an idea he highlighted again Tuesday. To develop that program, his administration is said to be planning to withdraw soon from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, despite resistance from Russia.

Much of what Bush said in 1999 seems strikingly prescient in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and the Afghanistan campaign.

“Our forces in the next century must be agile, lethal, readily deployable and require a minimum of logistical support,” Bush said as a candidate. “We must be able to project our power over long distances, in days or weeks rather than months. Our military must be able to identify targets by a variety of means--from a Marine patrol to a satellite. Then be able to destroy those targets almost instantly . . . .”

On Tuesday, Bush argued that the Afghanistan war demonstrates the value of reconstructing the military along those lines. “Afghanistan has been a proving ground for this new approach. These past two months have shown that innovative doctrine and high-tech weaponry can shape and then dominate an unconventional conflict.”

This ambitious vision has aligned Bush with a coterie of defense reformers advocating what is known as military transformation. The transformation advocates argue that the United States should reduce its investment in an array of conventional weapon systems--from existing aircraft carriers to jet fighters--and rely more on futuristic weapons that employ stealth, target with precision and strike from long range.

Critics of the transformation doctrine, such as Michael E. O’Hanlon of the nonpartisan Brookings Institution think tank, maintain that its proponents oversell the extent to which high-tech alternatives are available for current weapons. But the critics and supporters agree on one point: Bush had been making little to no progress in selling the Pentagon, Congress and the defense community on his campaign pledge of defense transformation.

“Before Sept. 11, the Bush team at the Pentagon was beleaguered, and it was largely blocked from implementing its agenda,” said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst (and transformation advocate) at the conservative Lexington Institute think tank.

The best measure of that frustration was the progress of the comprehensive review of Pentagon operations that Rumsfeld launched soon after the Bush administration took office. Though the effort began with high expectations, Rumsfeld was criticized for failing to consult with Congress or the uniformed military as the review proceeded. And when the final result was incorporated into the congressionally mandated “quadrennial defense review” that Rumsfeld released this fall, the report was widely criticized as mostly an acceptance of the status quo.

“The report failed to map out a concrete plan for transforming America’s Cold War military into a more agile and integrated force better suited to meet new threats,” wrote Steve J. Nider, director of foreign and security studies at the centrist Progressive Policy Institute.

With his speech Tuesday, Bush sought to give the transformation effort a new breath of life. “The need for military transformation was clear before the conflict in Afghanistan and before Sept. 11,” he declared. “What’s different today is our sense of urgency, this need to build this future force while fighting a present war. It’s like overhauling a car engine while you are going 80 miles an hour. Yet we have no other choice.”

Jack Spencer, a defense analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, says the war in Afghanistan gives Bush two new assets in his push for transformation. First, he noted, the Afghanistan campaign significantly increased the prestige and authority of Bush and Rumsfeld. Just as important, he said, “this war really shows the importance of being able to strike anywhere on Earth with precision from anywhere, and that is what transformation is all about.”

Others caution that the transformation effort faces the same fundamental political problem it did before Sept. 11.

Existing weapon programs all have constituencies--in the armed services that administer them, the contractors that produce them and the members of Congress allied with both. Trying to cut funding for these programs, much less get rid of them, can be politically impossible.

Many analysts say that means that without big increases in defense spending, transformation will probably remain more vision than reality. “Without more money, Rumsfeld has to fund transformation by cutting programs that the services think are essential,” said Thompson. “That’s the crux of the problem.”

The success of the Afghanistan campaign could even strengthen the hand of those resisting transformation by challenging the claim that big changes are needed.

O’Hanlon said the military’s showing in Afghanistan suggests that it is continuing to innovate at an acceptable rate--what he calls “ambitious incrementalism”--and does not need an overhaul intended to radically accelerate the pace of technological advance.

“The bottom line is: What you are seeing in Afghanistan is that today’s military has done a very good job without being transformed in the radical way that the [transformation] concept would generally espouse,” he said.