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| 1 |
ID:
137583
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| 2 |
ID:
128788
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| 3 |
ID:
123288
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The threat is real, deadly and serious-for everyone, not just the United States. The rapid collapse of distinctions between transnational criminal organizations and terrorist organizations has led to a threat convergence the likes of which we have not seen before and are only beginning to understand. Transnational organized criminals and foreign terrorist organizations have linked (both wittingly and not) in what we now call the crime-terror pipeline, or CTP. While the intellectual landscape of the problem is still under study, its scale and relevance have made it squarely a Tier-One national security threat, as codified in the White House Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime.
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| 4 |
ID:
110156
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| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
America's military has proven incredibly effective and adaptive to the threats of the 9/11 era. It has not, however, been particularly cost-conscious. Insolvency is our gravest national security threat, and - thankfully - the Congress has finally gotten serious about dealing with it. Defense is in for a decade of austerity, of a magnitude that cannot be accommodated within current strategy and forces. Much higher risk will need to be accepted in how we fight our wars and address threats of lesser magnitude or longer lead times unless we find more innovative approaches. Foregoing counterinsurgencies, simplifying our war aims, protecting our advantages in creativity, restructuring military benefits, shifting greater responsibility to allies and emphasizing cost-exchange ratios in our operations will be necessary. It is a daunting list, and wearying to a military that has shouldered the burdens of wars for a decade with little contribution from our broader society. But it, or something like it, will also be necessary to redress the dangerous vulnerability or our debt.
Historian Arnold Toyenbee said that empires die by suicide, not homicide. Our country has been on a path to suicide by spending profligacy and it has resulted in a debt problem of enormous magnitude. This is our main strategic vulnerability, and our capacity to solve it will likely be the crucial test of whether American hegemony is perpetuated through the twenty-first century, or we have begun to decline.
Our country is facing a margin call. We have used borrowed money to purchase assets. Those assets are both discretionary (defense and other annual spending) and non-discretionary (entitlement payments and promises). External markets and internal regulators-in the form of the American electorate-have called into question whether we have the money to pay for the assets we have purchased. Receiving a margin call, the investor must either increase the amount of money on deposit or sell off assets.
Faced with difficult choices, the United States has two enormous advantages. First, Americans have acknowledged the problem and are engaged in an extended and boisterous debate on how to solve it. Second, U.S. military dominance is so substantial that we can absorb near-term risk of significant defense spending cuts in order to solve the larger strategic problem of our national indebtedness.
The coming cuts in defense will necessitate the first serious reconsideration in the 9/11 era of the strategy and requirements for U.S. military forces. The Department of Defense (DOD) is in the process of determining where to pare for the $450 billion in cuts that constitute the first phase of the budget reductions; the more vexing question is how DOD would accommodate the additional $600-800 billion that would come with sequestration or a second phase "super committee" agreement.
To operate within the constraints of such austerity, we will have to fight differently. The size of our forces will shrink further, even though they are already too small. We will not be able to sustain personnel-intensive wars like counterinsurgencies. The operational approaches available at lesser cost have daunting endogenous effects on our military and exogenous effects on the societies in territories where we will apply military force. We will become more reliant on reconstitution, extending the timelines beyond what we have come to take for granted as immediate availability of forces and rapid execution of war plans.
We may also need to forego important recalibrations, like allowing the Marine Corps to differentiate itself from the Army and refocus on amphibious operations, and the long overdue returning of the national guard and reserve to their traditional roles. Spending in other national security agencies-on which current war strategies rely-is almost certain to be reduced even more than in DOD, calling into question our ability to conduct "whole of government" operations. These developments w
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