The Pentagon's New Map > Director's Commentary

The Global Transaction Strategy

OVERVIEW

This chapter moves into the policy prescription phase of the book, which is always a scary thing for a visionary like me who tries to steer clear of such detail, and yet I needed to give the reader a decent sense of how all this new understanding of how the world works should logically translate into a dramatically revamped national security establishment. Again, if we are "present at the creation," then all these new rule sets logically replicate themselves into new relationships, doctrines, organizations and alliances.

What's really interesting about this chapter—to me at least—is how some reviewers find the ideas very implausible while others find them quite likely to unfold. Oddly enough, those reviewers with less subject-matter expertise find this material more fanciful, while defense insiders find it quite compelling! What does that tell you about the disconnect between the U.S. military and the American public?

I think this chapter is a bit harder for the reader, because it's awfully defense-centric, but it was easily the simplest material for me to write. If there is one chapter where I most clearly cannibalized lots of past work, this is it. In many ways, then, this is the adapted-from-other-sources chapter, which made it the easiest (by his description) for Mark Warren to edit. As he said at the time, I was deep into my "groove" by this point (early September 2003) in my 40-day writing process. My confidence was growing by the day, so this chapter flowed non-stop from the moment I got up every morning.

So if, in the preceding chapters, I took the readers progressively farther away from my professional roots in national security, this is the chapter where all the lines lead back to the Pentagon—or what I know best.

UNTITLED INTRO ESSAY

This was—oddly enough given what I just said—probably the hardest of the seven intro mini-essays to write. I mean, how do you segue into this amazingly big quartet of arguments (the tremendous evolution of the U.S. military since the end of the Cold War, America's essential security transaction with the outside world, the bifurcation of DoD, the American way of war)? What's the little personal hook you use?

So I searched around and came up with my mini-vacation with my kids to NYC a few weeks earlier, focusing on the trip to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and then I segued that into a discussion of whether or not America owes the world anything beyond just being a shining example of the future. A bit weak perhaps (Geez! Abusing your family vacation like that! But close enough for government work . . ..).

What I was really searching for here was a sense of responsibility for others besides ourselves, and an argument for why the U.S. must not only stay open for business during this global struggle, but be more open than ever to those stuck in the Gap and yearning for a better life. It was while writing this material that I began wondering why the notion that America should stay stuck at 50 "member states," as I like to call them, had become so sacred and untouchable in public discourse. In part, my family's decision to adopt a child from China makes me think this way, but even more plainly, my belief in Christ makes me think this way. I just can't help thinking we need to let more people in on the good life we enjoy here, and if they can't all fit in America, then fine. We just need to expand America and/or the Core in general to encompass them.

That's the real transaction I advocate here: trading their ambition for our sense of belonging and security. In the end, we all want connectivity, whether it's the ability to travel freely, exchange ideas freely, connect our education to our goals freely, marry whomever we want freely—it's all about connectivity. My essential optimism is that I believe connectivity trumps all else, because I believe love trumps all else.

Geez-I guess gay marriage is inevitable . . ..

That's why I believe in the concept that America's greatest public-sector export is security—or a belief in the future. Giving that gift to others on this planet is as close a definition of doing God's work as I can find in my job as a national security analyst. Does that make me a crazy religious type for connecting my career to my beliefs in this manner? No, not at all. It just means I crave the same connectivity that we all do in our work—the connectivity to higher ends that we feel justify our time on this planet.

YOU'RE RUINING MY MILITARY!

This ends up being an odd little section where Mark Warren must have cut a lot of material because it seems so small in the book. For the life of me, I can't remember what he must have cut, but I expect I'll find those sections when I construct my "deleted scenes" for this chapter later today. [Later comment: Boy, did I ever!]

Like all opening chapter sections, this one is career narrative, albeit in a very loose sort of way. It's basically a defense, I guess, of my career goal of trying to make the military into something it does not want to become—something that wages peace as much—or more—than it wages war.

I have gone back and forth on this subject in my career many times: thinking alternatively that this military should go Sys Admin all the way or remain very Leviathan-like and screw all that MOOTW crap. My ambivalence is mirrored throughout much of the military. No one joins the military to do things "other than war," and few officers reach very high rank if their careers are full of such duty. And yet, when polls are taken of young soldiers who end up getting a chance to do Military Operations Other Than War, or all that disaster-relief/peacekeeping/nation-building/hugs-and-kisses crap (that last one being a favorite NATO phrase), we find that our young men and women find far more personal and career satisfaction in this "everything else" than they do in either preparing for or actually waging war.

Duh! Go figure!

So, in many ways, I guess I've never really admitted that I might be "ruining this military" with my ideas, but rather I feel like I'm helping it to self-actualize-to become what it really can be as a world-changing historical force without peer.

And how does that make you feel, SECDEF?

Other details …

(1) The first guy who ever used this line on me was Jim Blaker, a fellow SPAG-er at the Center for Naval Analyses. He later became Adm. Bill Owens' "Boswell" and now works out of SAIC for Art Cebrowski. Jim came up to me at the Xerox machine at SPAG right after I came out with my let's-make-peace-with-the-commies report on rapidly increasing mil-mil coop with the Russian Navy (Chapter 1). He said, half joking and half seriously, "You know, with all this making peace stuff, you're just going to ruin this military that I know and love—this wonderful killing machine. And it's a shame, a real shame." Now, with Blaker, you never really know how serious he is, because he's such a teaser and so wicked in his humor. Plus, he has a tendency to grin even when he's being serious. In retrospect, I really think Jim was just giving me a heads up on what the rest of my career was going to be like. And you know what? He was incredibly accurate. That tagline has haunted me my entire career, along with "latter-day Norman Angell" (raised yet again in the National Review's review of the book—sigh!)

(2) As I look the chapter over, it's a lot like listening in to the arguments I constantly have inside my own head on this subject of whether we should go one way or the other with the military. This is why, in the end, I always come back to the notion that we really need two militaries. There is a really subconscious quality to the text here—at least to me.

THE ESSENTIAL TRANSACTION

This section really just lays out an argument I've been using in briefs ever since I started trying to capture the linkages between security and global economics in the mid-1990s. It took me years before I finally got the ideas down on slides, but when I did, they went over—to my complete surprise—like gangbusters. The bit hint I kept getting from audiences was that, whenever I used the phrase "exporting security," people would often write it down like some fabulous mantra they didn't want to forget. When I picked up on that, it made me think, "If we exporting then someone is importing, and if that is the case, then there is some essential underlying transaction at work here."

That realization became a series of slides that I generated with inputs from Art Cebrowski and Bradd Hayes in the fall of 2001. It was weird to finally get these ideas up on a screen, because I knew intrinsically that they had implicitly animated my thinking for years. It was like I was finally coming out of the closet as an economic determinist—and a damn optimistic one at that for someone who learned it from Marxists! (Okay, just Harvard professors, but there's a reason why they called the "Kremlin on the Charles . . ..)

Here are the slides I use in the brief. You can see the entire section in them:

Other details:

(1) My friend Vice Admiral Tom Weschler [p. 303] read the First Pass galley version of the book and sent me an email decrying my frequent use of the "vertical pronoun" and then passed on the advice that Admiral Arleigh Burke once gave him about avoiding its usage. I emailed him back, saying I felt the only way I could sell such a comprehensive vision of grand strategy was not to force the reader into submitting to my "towering" logic alone (as good as I thought it was), but that I also had to reveal the personal journey that got me to this level of thinking about the future. In short, I felt I had to convince the reader I was neither some mad warmongering scientist nor some wooly-headed pacifist academic, but a real practitioner of the art I was laying before my audience. Well, after he read a bit further, he wrote back and said, "Ignore what I said. I now see the utility of your approach." That conversion meant a lot to me, because I knew many people in my business would condemn the memoir portions of the book as so much silly (if entertaining) nonsense, believing instead I should have spent a load of time describing why the Gap is the Gap (something I think I do, just not in the way some classicists might prefer). In reality, I didn't want to write a book blaming the world's poor and disconnected for being poor and disconnected. I figure there's plenty of finger-pointers for that one. I prefer to start from the right now and speak primarily to solution sets.

That, and I just love talking about myself …

(2) The big brief to a Naval War College audience that I describe on page 303 was really a tremendous honor afforded to me by then President of the college, Rear Admiral Rodney Rempt, when he gave me the opportunity to give an evening lecture to not only the entire student body but also invited community guests. For me it was a real thrill because I could invite anyone I knew, including my wife Vonne, to see me do my thing—that is, to give a brief. It occurred on 1 May 2002, and it was part of the Contemporary Civilization Lecture Series put on the Naval War College Foundation. I have the presentation on videotape.

(3) The sequence on pages 304-306 about keeping the flows in balance stem from the following slide in the brief:

THE SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR

In this third section, I get to the concept that seems to catch fire more the worse our situation in occupying Iraq becomes: the notion of the inevitable and much needed bifurcation of the U.S. military into a force that wages war and one that wages peace. Why I feel so strongly about this goal is because I am certain that until the U.S. seeds this force sufficiently within its own ranks and demonstrates both its willingness to deploy it and its effectiveness in operations, the U.S. will never attract the coalition partners needed to truly deal with all the rehab jobs that we'll encounter inside the Gap in coming decades. Without the emergence of that capability over time, the A-to-Z global rule set (and associated international organizations to oversee their enforcement) on how to process politically-bankrupt states will never emerge. In short, the Iraq occupation should transform transformation and—by doing so—once again put DoD in the position of changing world history, much as it has done in the past when it has created capabilities that latter infiltrated and reshaped the civilian world-like nuclear power, the Internet, GPS, UAVs, and the like. Again, this is the future worth creating, and the Pentagon can play a hugely positive role here.

Other details . . .

(1) What's interesting about the article ("Life After DoDth or: How the Evernet Changes Everything") that I cite on page 315 is that it began as an email response to a question I got from Art Cebrowski regarding how the Millennial Date Change Event actually went down so smoothly. His question basically was, "Was DoD relevant to this global response process and if not, what does that tell us about the role of DoD in future crises in this age of globalization?" Well, I gave him about a five-page email reply, and my colleague at the college, Bradd Hayes, opined that it "looks like an article to me," and so I wrote it up. It has become one of the most cited articles I've ever generated.

(2) What has always bugged me about 9/11 [p. 317] is that DoD has never felt any special responsibility for the failure of the national security establishment to prevent that day. Like everyone else, they prefer to blame the intell community alone. But to me, 9/11 did exactly what I predicted the "electronic Pearl Harbor" would do: reveal DoD as inherently ill-prepared and therefore largely irrelevant to the immediate task at hand—dealing with the strategic security environment of the globalization era.

(3) Here are two summary slides I use in the brief to speak to the essential differences between the Sys Admin and Leviathan forces:

I use a notional "Department of Security" logo to express the Sys Admin function in these slides. Don't worry, when this bifurcation becomes official in some new cabinet level department, I'm sure bureaucrats will come up with some name equally as bone-headed as Homeland Security.

(4) I actually constructed this section's long passage about the differences between the two forces one afternoon while sitting through a workshop on the future of security of Europe. I simply drew a line down the middle of the page and put Leviathan on the left and Sys Admin on the right. Then I would write down some classic characteristic of the warfighting force and think up what would logically be its "antidote" or Doppelganger in the Sys Admin force. Then I strung the pairs together in logical clumps, ordered those clumps in a logical order, and then wrote my paragraphs [pp. 320-26]. That is very typical of my mechanistic writing style—I really need to have the rule set clear in my head before I can write it down.

THE AMERICAN WAY OF WAR

In this final section I basically take the article I co-authored with Hank Gaffney entitled, "The Top 100 Rules of the American Way of War" and turn it into a section. This effort began as a consulting job for me, working for Hank. He was running a study that focused on updating the notion of the American way of war going all the way back to the invasion of Panama. Hank and I were of two different minds as to what could be captured in that stretch of history. I, for example, saw the emergence of a Sys Admin function for the U.S. military, meaning we no longer wage wars against direct enemies but on behalf of the system against rule-breakers within that system. Also, we no longer really fight states anymore, but instead go into situations in order to disable, capture or kill bad actors who either happen to be hiding within a country or have managed to obtain dictatorial power there (or seek to).

Here is the essential slide I generated for Hank in that effort (which still floats around):

The career narrative story I start off with in this section is the one I love to tell about how Art Cebrowski and I essentially met. The back story goes like this: I had already decided in the spring of 1998 that I was going to take the job with the Naval War College and leave the Center for Naval Analyses. As sort of a going-away present, my immediate superior at the time, Gary Federici, sent me off to Newport in the early summer of 1998 to cover Global 98, the big annual wargame at the college (no longer held for lack of plausible competition). In this historic event, the Global series was going to try and employ for the first time the concepts of network-centric warfare. Why? The incoming president of the college was the father of net-centric warfare-Art Cebrowski.

So Gary sent me to cover the game and provide analysis back to CNA, knowing I could use my spare time up in Newport to perform tasks associated with our upcoming move. Well, my analysis of that game became the article I later published in Proceedings called "The Seven Deadly Sins of Network Centric Warfare." I wrote it for CNA as an Occasional Paper, but it was considered so controversial and incendiary, that CNA almost refused to publish it. It was only after I had left CNA and joined the college, and then got the article published with Proceedings in January 1999, that CNA finally published the Occasional Paper (postdated back to Sept 1998-no less!). That Occasional Paper was entitled, "The Seven Deadly Sins of Network-Centric Warfare: A Devil's Advocate Looks at Global 98."

When the Proceedings article came out in early 1999, everyone at the college assumed I'd be called in on the carpet in the president's office for a verbal licking, but Art never offered one. In the end, he was grateful I took his ideas so seriously to write my critique, and has spent many hours with me since trying to convince me of the errors of my ways.

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent Global War on Terrorism really bring Art and I together on the subject of Network-Centric Warfare, in part because it frees him from having to stay focused on China as the near-peer competitor rationale for transformation and in part because it provides the Pentagon with a truly networked opponent in transnational terrorism.

After telling that story [pp. 327-29], I basically describe how our two views of Network-Centric Warfare merge together [pp. 329-33], culminating in our unofficial "making up" publication that I excerpt on page 332. The title of that Proceedings publication (Jan 03) marked the birth of the title for this section: "The American Way of War."

Now back to the list of the Top 100 rules: I generated that for Gaffney on my own as a consulting product. I just wanted to see if I could come up with an actual list of rules, and I used as my inspiration the various VH-1 "Top 100" shows (albums, songs, bands, etc.) that were on TV at the time. Hank liked the list and worked it over a bit, changing about one-fifth of the rules, but he did not want to publish it as a CNA document, preferring to go a different way in the final report.

So, since the list wasn't going anywhere in the fall of 2002, I sent a copy to Art Cebrowski, asking him what he thought. He made a few suggestions and then opined that we should seek publication somewhere. I nosed around a few journals but most said they weren't interested in publishing just a rote list of declarative statements like that.

Then I got a call from Fred Rainbow, the editor of Proceedings. He wanted to ask me to come to their annual San Diego meeting and present on a panel (it actually ended up being one of my first presentations of the concept of System Perturbations, which went over—frankly—like a lead balloon with all these retired naval officers who couldn't figure out what they hell I was babbling on about!). I told him about the list and he said it wasn't for them, given its format, but then suggested that maybe Art and I write a companion piece to explain it, something more traditional. He promised publication in the January 2003 issue because he wanted Art to have something in that issue, given the fact that he was coming to San Diego as well to receive an award from the Naval Institute. Fred said that if I did that for him, he would post the Top 100 list on the USNI website as a special online publication in tandem with the article—a first for Proceedings.

The reception to the article I co-wrote with Art was great. Tom Ricks, the defense reporter for the Washington Post, tried to get it reprinted in the Outlook section of the Sunday paper, but it did not stick. However, the British Army Review did like both the article and the list so much they republished both in the summer 2003 edition of their journal, giving the list its own formal publication finally.

Well, with all that material there just for the taking, it was an easy call to build an entire section in the book around these ideas.

Now here is where it gets interesting: having written the section, I have my colleague Bradd Hayes gin up some slides for my brief based on the section. I start briefing this material around in the early fall of 2003 and the response in the Pentagon and defense community is very strong. As the Iraq occupation gets more difficult, the notion of the bifurcation of DoD becomes more realistic. So you see Art Cebrowski floating the idea of a dedicated "stabilization force," even tasking the National Defense University to conduct a feasibility study ("Transforming for Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations), available online at: http://www.ndu.edu/ctnsp/SR%20Ops.pdf). Then you have the White House floating the concept of a Global Peace Operations Force in April of 2004.

Cause and effect? Hardly. Just the system catching up to this visionary, who, as I detail in the book, has been toying with this idea for roughly half a decade. All these shifts and proposals prove is that, since 9/11, it is getting harder to stay ahead of events as a security visionary. In short, it's getting harder to stay "out there."

The rest of the section starting on page 333 is basically my rewriting of my original list of 100 rules that I generated for Hank Gaffney as a consultant. I include the actual list below. You will notice that I only go through the first 70 rules, because rules 71-100 involve groups of rules particular to each military service, and I thought that material was simply too granular for the average reader.

So, as you can see, this section is an unusual one in the book. It actually began as an article that went directly into the book, and then this section begat a new portion of the briefing. The rest of the book really began in the briefing or came from previously published material that had already been integrated into the briefing. This is the one part of the book which essentially extended the briefing on its own, which is either a really fascinating tidbit to you or a sign I was running out of gas in early September 2003 (or both).

Here's the original list:

The Top 100 Rules Of The New American Way Of War

By Dr. Thomas P. M. Barnett and Dr. Henry H. Gaffney Jr.

THE PATHS TO WAR

The United States Stands Ready for Any Type of War

1. The U.S. military stays ready because it understands that while the world is full of ongoing situations in which it remains involved, it must be prepared for any acts of war against the United States that come "out of the blue." 

2. U.S. forces believe in constant training, both to facilitate their command of their complex war-making system and to deal with a wide variety of circumstances. 

3. Because the United States must move forces long distances to fight, it does extensive contingency planning to conquer the time and distance factors.

Whom the United States Fights in Wars

4. The United States wages war on states or nonstate actors that attack or threaten to attack the U.S. homeland. 

5. The United States wages war on states or nonstate actors that attack U.S. military forces or other instruments of the government; because the United States is the de facto global cop, any such attack is perceived as an attack on global stability itself. 

6. If all other measures fail, the United States reserves the right to bring war preemptively to states or nonstate actors that actively seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction for use against the United States or any of its allies. 

7. The United States wages war on states that harbor or actively support terrorist groups with transnational objectives and reach, and this war encompasses all elements of U.S. national power. 

8. Maintaining a commitment to global stability, the United States wages war on states or nonstate actors that threaten or launch wars against our key allies, including other North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and others.

Where the United States Is Ready to Fight Wars 

9. The United States is prepared to intervene within the western hemisphere, and especially in the Caribbean and Central American areas, because this is its neighborhood. 

10. The United States is ready to defend against aggression in Europe because this was the source of the worst wars of the past and because NATO is its strongest and oldest security alliance. 

11. The United States is ready to wage war in Southwest Asia, particularly in the Persian Gulf region, where it is the only power capable of stabilizing the area—thus ensuring the continuing flow of energy out of the region. 

12. In strong alliance with Japan, the United States is prepared to deter or defeat a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and a North Korean attack on South Korea. 

13. Beyond these cases, the United States is ready to go anywhere to combat terrorist groups that are part of a global organization and plot.

What Triggers the United States to Go to War 

14. The United States retaliates automatically to any direct attack against its homeland, although this may not be instantaneous in the case of a terrorist attack because a nonstate actor's identity and home base may not immediately be clear. 

15. Other than in response to direct attacks on the United States, there currently are five situations where the United States reflexively would engage in war:

• If Iraq were to attack Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, or Israel;
• If China were to attack Taiwan;
• If North Korea were to attack South Korea;
• If Iran or Iraq were to attempt to close the Persian Gulf to oil traffic;
• If al Qaeda or any successor terrorist group attacks U.S. citizens, forces, or property anywhere in the world. 

16. Outside of those circumstances, any overt U.S. war effort will follow an extensive debate within the U.S. and international political system, with the critical questions being:

• How much congressional and public debate?
• How much U.N. consultation/approval?
• What level of allied consultation and contributions? 

17. The United States pursues covert operations as part of the global war on terrorism in accordance withpresidential findings.

U.S. Goals in the Conduct of War 

18. Beyond preserving or restoring national security, the fundamental U.S. goal is sustaining global norms against the aggressive use of force, meaning U.S. actions are limited to those states or actors that transgress these rule sets. 

19. Beyond that, U.S. interventions are meant to ensure aggression does not reoccur by supporting the institution of the rule of law and democracy. 

20. In waging war, the United States seeks to protect the functioning of the global economy as necessary, since trade can flourish only under conditions of peace and freedom under law. 

21. In any conflict, the United States seeks to limit its own absolute losses, so as not to damage the American public's support both for the intervention in question and for this nation's long-term involvement in international security. 

22. The United States seeks to limit collateral damage, thus to limit foreign resentment concerning the use of U.S. military force and to set the stage for restoration of economies and government once the conflict has ended.

Whose Help the United States Seeks in War 

23. The United States seeks as much approval, cooperation, and mutual agreement as possible from the global community for any conflict it responds to or initiates, because it wants all such actions to further the advance of collective security. 

24. When practicable, the United States seeks approval and sanction in the U.N. forum, but reserves the right to act unilaterally or to organize a "coalition of the willing" if such consensus cannot be found. 

25. As appropriate, the United States seeks the aid and agreement of the other NATO countries (especially the United Kingdom) because they are its closest allies and can provide forces most able to join U.S. efforts.

THE CONDUCT OF WAR

How the United States Commands in War 

26. U.S. political control is direct and detailed at the start and conclusion of any war, and is coordinated with diplomatic actions. 

27. The Unified Combatant Commander plans operations in detail. 

28. The Unified Combatant Commander manages relations with involved coalition partners. 

29. Combined Joint Task Forces closer to the action execute the plans, while keeping the Unified Combatant Commander fully informed. 

30. As one specialized command, a Joint Forces Air Control Center or Combined Air Operations Center is set up to manage all air assets. 

31. The common operational picture, compiled from extensively networked data and information flows, is available to every command element in the chain.

What the United States Mobilizes and Takes to Any War 

32. Any war the United States wages involves all elements of national power, meaning the United States works to defeat its enemy in every way possible:

• Destroying their ability to wage war
• Isolating them from potential allies
• Denying them resources
• Denying them the sympathy of others. 

33. The United States establishes logistical lines of communication because—aside from homeland defense—all operations are "overseas," and for the most part not likely to be where U.S. forces are stationed permanently. Thus the United States maintains and obtains airlift and sealift to get equipment, personnel, and supplies to the theater in sufficient time and quantities. 

34. Relying heavily on space assets, the United States mobilizes a global information grid to achieve information dominance before a single shot is fired. 

35. The United States brings as much firepower of the joint forces to bear as possible, supported by intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance within a comprehensive command-and-control system so it can be applied as precisely as possible. 

36. To preserve personnel, the United States mobilizes the world's preeminent combat medical system.

How the United States Gets to War 

37. Because the United States maintains the world's only global blue-water navy, most U.S. forces and supplies go safely by sea. 

38. If speed is required, or if the United States wishes to strike directly from the continental United States, other remote bases, or the sea, it can deliver much force by strategic airlift or long-range strike aircraft, using midair refueling. 

39. The United States prepositions equipment and supplies both on ships and on allies' territories for easy breakout and rapid deployment of personnel. 

40. The United States uses established overseas bases, establishes new bases in adjacent countries that are supportive, or establishes lodgments in remote areas of hostile territories.

What Forces the United States Brings to War 

41. The United States is ready to draw on all five services as needed for any particular war. 

42. The United States brings overwhelming force to bear before joining a conflict, not committing forces piecemeal. 

43. The United States seeks to overwhelm the opponent with joint firepower, and endeavors to keep the ground forces' "footprint" as economical as possible. 

44. The United States operates air assets from both adjacent bases on allied territory and carriers in adjacent seas, as well as distant, over-the-horizon bases and even the continental United States, taking full advantage of its midair refueling assets. 

45. The United States uses Special Forces—including Central Intelligence Agency paramilitaries—for special up-front and follow-on tasks, and for guiding precision munitions from on-the-ground locations. 

46. Whenever interagency collaboration makes sense, those additional civilian personnel are brought along, rather than the military trying to replicate their capabilities.

How the United States Fights 

47. The underlying principle for employing regular forces is the United States' desire to keep the conflict "over there" as much as possible; retaliation against terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland is an "away game." 

48. The United States aims for rapid dominance of any battlefield it may enter, so the initial blows come from the air:

• First, the United States suppresses air defenses, including airfields.
• Next, it hits strategic targets like command and control.
• Then, it breaks the logistic connections to the deployed enemy forces.
• Finally, it directs air strikes against opposing ground forces. 

49. The United States uses ground forces to roll up enemy ground forces that have been softened by air attacks and to occupy territory. 

50. Leveraging its space assets, the United States possesses and keeps expanding an unparalleled capacity to wage network-centric warfare:

• It drives up the enemy's information requirements and then degrades its ability to meet them.
• It achieves as much transparency over the battlefield as possible for U.S. forces, then leverages that advantage to destroy enemy forces, equipment, and installations. 

51. U.S. forces maneuver rapidly to avoid static "front lines," turning each engagement into an ambush across a "noncontiguous" battlefield. 

52. Because no potential foe matches well, the United States expects opponents to defend themselves with dispersal and concealment, to seek destruction of high-value U.S. assets, to use chemical or biological weapons, and to seek sanctuary in both urban and remote environments. Therefore the United States increasingly anticipates and prepares for those tactics and develops capabilities for combat in those venues.

How U.S. Forces Defend Themselves in War 

53. If the United States has evidence that a potential foe possesses both the wherewithal and the intention of employing weapons of mass destruction, it reserves the right to engage in preemptive strikes against that capability. 

54. In any conflict, the U.S. military seeks to defeat its enemy in the field while simultaneously waging a three-front defensive strategy:

• Preserving its forces in-theater through mobility, range and stealth;
• Defending U.S. military and diplomatic installations around the world through vigilance;
• Protecting the homeland from retaliatory strikes by preventing their launching at the source. 

55. The United States seeks to avoid using its nuclear weapons, but remains ready to retaliate against any state that first uses weapons of mass destruction against its forces.

How the United States Protects Its Homeland during War

56. Protecting the homeland remains the most important defense function of the Defense Department, therefore it makes forces available for those purposes as necessary. 

57. Protecting the homeland is first and foremost a matter of deterring attacks that employ weapons of mass destruction by the threat of nuclear retaliation, so the United States maintains and modernizes its nuclear forces. 

58. The United States develops and deploys missile defense to strengthen deterrence and to defend in the event deterrence fails. 

59. The United States is prepared to strike preemptively against any regime or nonstate actor it knows to be planning for, or mounting, an attack against the homeland as part of a strategy to degrade U.S. power projection capabilities.

How the United States Stabilizes Situations as Wars Subside 

60. The United States conducts "psychological operations" to try to win the hearts and minds of the local population toward the goals of its intervention. 

61. The United States makes every necessary effort to track down and incapacitate known belligerents who refuse to comply with conflict-termination agreements; it also facilitates the capture, processing, and confinement of individuals suspected of war crimes for later adjudication by internationally recognized courts. 

62. The United States works with local social and political leaders to resurrect basic elements of the government and infrastructure to return life to some semblance of normality. 

63. When necessary, the United States conducts emergency humanitarian missions on its own, until civilian or international relief groups can pick up the task.

THE AFTERMATH OF WAR

When the United States Leaves a War 

64. The United States does not leave until the capital city is under firm control by friendly forces and government. 

65. The United States does not leave until the countryside is no longer roiling with conflict, and appears to be quiet enough for the local constabulary to once again extend its political reach—sometimes with the help of other states' peacekeepers. 

66. The United States does not leave until all the major local players in the conflict basically sign up to the conflict termination agreements and demonstrate their adherence. 

67. The United States does not leave until the magnitude of any ongoing humanitarian crises have been reduced to the point where the international community can meet the population's basic needs.

What the United States Leaves Behind Following a War 

68. The United States may leave behind Special Forces or other Army trainers to help the country rebuild its military and to train them to combat remaining rebels. 

69. If the United States expects to return for further combat in the country or region, it may leave behind a supply of prepositioned materiel, signaling a strong relationship with the surviving/reconstituted government. 

70. The United States may leave with signed agreements for long-term military cooperation or government-financed arms sales to help the country get its military back on its feet.

THE EMPOYMENT OF VARIOUS FORCES IN WAR

How the United States Uses Air Forces in War

71. The United States strikes enemies first from the air to suppress air and ground defenses and to hit strategic targets, using its Air Force and/or naval aviation as defined by circumstances. 

72. Once the United States effectively rules the skies, it is free to choose the time and location of strikes for strategic effect. 

73. Over time, because of increasing accuracy and better intelligence, the United States realizes greater economy of force with its air strike assets, limiting collateral damage. 

74. The United States is able to strike with aircraft stationed far away and keep those aircraft loitering on station at length since it has an enormous capability for midair refueling. 

75. U.S. air strike assets are managed centrally through an air tasking order, but as network-centric operations mature and enemy forces resort more to dispersing themselves, an increasingly larger portion of these assets is freed to respond flexibly to targets of opportunity. 

76. Airlift is a major tool for delivering, dispersing, and removing ground personnel and materiel throughout combat areas.

77. By gradually increasing the use of unmanned air platforms, the United States loiters longer and closer in dangerous environments while risking fewer personnel.

How the United States Uses Naval Forces in War 

78. Because the United States "owns" the world's oceans, it focuses its naval forces' combat activities onto the land—including strategic targets deep inland—as part of joint combat operations. 

79. U.S. naval forces are responsible for defending the sea approaches to land against threats from mines, submarines, attack boats, cruise missiles, and air attacks. 

80. Naval forces are part of U.S. joint air strike forces, with Tomahawk land-attack missiles playing a leading role. 

81. U.S. naval forces provide off-shore staging platforms for Marines, Special Forces, and Army forces; the Marines, in particular, are customized to approach combat zones from the sea. 

82. The Military Sealift Command, as part of the joint Transportation Command, transports the vast majority of Army troops and logistic supplies to a theater.

How the United States Uses Ground Forces in War 

83. Marines, having been designed as a self-supporting force, are a useful interim force until the U.S. assembles larger ground forces. 

84. Marines have specialized capabilities for special operations, chemical-biological responses, and urban warfare, thus expanding the joint commander's tool kit. 

85. The Army offers broadly capable large-scale ground units featuring heavy firepower, armored mobility, and air and missile defenses. 

86. Large Army units are moved mainly by sea to prepared staging areas, except for the lightly equipped 18th Airborne Corps. 

87. To minimize ground force casualties, the United States avoids attrition warfare by stressing reconnaissance, overwhelming force, armor and other protections, and rapid maneuver. 

88. Ground forces complete the liberation of territory and the eradication of opposing forces. 

89. The Army is the premier long-term occupation force, which means if any nation-building is pursued postconflict, the Army maintains the peace while the transition is made to international or local civilian rule.

How the United States Uses Unconventional Forces in War 

90. Special Forces are the clandestine/covert infiltration force, so they are used in small numbers for specialized tasks. 

91. Where minimal personnel are needed in the most dangerous situations (e.g., pre-invasion reconnaissance, spotting for air strikes), Special Forces are preferred because they require the least support. 

92. Special Forces set the military standard for cooperation with law enforcement agencies, apprehending combatants in both war and peace. 

93. Special Forces set the standard for cooperation with intelligence agencies because of their sensor-like role in command and control and their unique abilities for unconventional tactics against asymmetrical opponents. 

94. When covert preemptive strikes are attempted, the United States employs Special Forces with a level of impunity far beyond previous use of U.S. military power in a peacetime environment.

How the United States Uses Reserve Forces in War 

95. Reserves are the backbone of an American hedge force and homeland security. 

96. Reserves are the cornerstone of logistics for combat operations, manning a large part of the airlift and air refueling force. 

97. Because of high demand, civil affairs personnel are de facto active-duty assets.

How the Services Fight Jointly in War 

98. Operations are joint from beginning to end, because Combatant Commanders plan operations according to the law. 

99. Space-based communications assets are the sine qua non of jointness because they move the services past mere deconfliction to genuine operational integration. 

100. Facing no peer competitor and enjoying the lion's share of the earth's surface and space as its operating domain, the United States exploits the exterior position to employ all five services in a network-centric approach that yields their maximum combined combat power.

* * *

That's it for the Director's Commentary on Chapter 6. Now onto the synthetic chapter that Mark Warren created from bits pulled from three other chapters.

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