PRIMACY AND GLOBAL LEADERSHIP: A GRAND STRATEGY FOR REPUBLICAN EMPIRE 

Remarks at the 2001 Meeting of the Philadelphia Society
21 April, 2001, Philadelphia Pennsylvania

Mackubin Thomas Owens
Professor of Strategy and Force Planning
US Naval War College
Newport, Rhode Island

     If any one therefore wishes to establish an entirely new republic, he will      have to consider whether he wishes to have her expand in power and dominion like Rome, or whether he intends to confine her within narrow limits.    (Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses, I. 6.)

It had been said that respectability in the eyes of foreign nations was not the object at which we aimed; that the proper object of republican Government was domestic tranquility & happiness. This was an ideal distinction. No Government could give us tranquility & happiness at home, which did not possess sufficient stability and strength to make us respectable abroad.  (Alexander Hamilton, speech to the Federal Convention, June 29, 1787)                           

            The development of strategy--the formulation of the application of means to achieve the nation’s goals--is a critical component of effective security planning and policy implementation.  Without a strategic framework for setting priorities and guiding the development and employment of the instruments of national power, it is difficult to evaluate proposed actions to ensure the nation’s security and prosperity. 

            In general, strategy serves three purposes.[i] First strategy relates ends, the goals of policy (interests and objectives) to the limited resources available to achieve them.  Both strategy and economics are concerned with the application of scarce resources to achieve certain goals.  But strategy implies and adversary who actively opposes the achievement of the ends. 

            Second, strategy contributes to the clarification of the ends of policy by helping establish priorities in light of constrained resources.  Without establishing priorities among competing ends, all interests and all threats will appear equal.  in the absence of strategy planners will find themselves in the situation described by Frederick the Great:  “He who attempts to defend too much defends nothing.” 

            Finally, strategy conceptualizes resources as means in support of policy.  Resources are not means until strategy provides some understanding of how they will be organized and employed.  This is the logical link between strategy and force planning.  Defense budgets and manpower are resources.   A strategic vision helps to transform these raw resources into such military means as divisions, wings, and fleets. 

            Strategy is an indispensable element of national security.  Without strategy, something else will fill the void.  In war, service doctrines will dominate the conduct of operations if strategy is absent.  this state of affairs is captured by Andrew Krepinevich’s description of the Vietnam War:  “a strategy of tactics.”[ii]  In peacetime, defense planning comes to be dominated by what Sam Huntington called “structural decisions,” i.e. decisions “made in the currency of domestic politics.”[iii] 

Grand Strategy 

            Traditionally, the term “strategy” has been used to describe the employment of military forces in war.  For example, B.H. Liddell-Hart defined strategy as “the art of distributing and applying military means to fulfill the ends of policy.”[iv] 

            However it is increasingly the practice to employ strategy more broadly so that one can speak of levels of strategy in both peace and war.[v]    Accordingly, strategy can be understood to apply not only to the application of force in wartime to achieve the goals of national policy, but also to the steps taken during peacetime to enhance national power in order to prevent war or win, should war become necessary.[vi]  Thus in the words of Edward Mead Earle: 

Strategy is the art of controlling and utilizing the resources of a nation--or a coalition of nations--including its armed forces, to the end that its vital interests shall be effectively promoted and secured against enemies, actual, potential, or merely presumed.  The highest type of strategy--sometimes called grand strategy--is that which so integrates the policies and armaments of the nation that resort to war is either rendered unnecessary or is undertaken with the maximum chance of victory.[vii] 

            Although it may be difficult, it is necessary to construct a generally accepted grand strategic design, a framework for establishing priorities, choosing a strategic approach, and allocating the resources necessary to implement the chosen strategy.  In the absence of such a framework, responses are all too often incoherent and reactive, and resources are allocated on the basis of short-term, parochial interests rather than long-term, national ones. 

            The process of developing a grand strategy begins with a delineation of national interests and goals. The dominant national interests of the United States can be defined in a general sense as the security and prosperity of the American polity and its citizens.  A grand strategy essentially lays out a plan for employing the various integrated instruments of national power to insure that these national interests are protected. 

            A grand strategy can be envisioned as the answers to a series of interrelated questions:   

            1) What conditions do policy makers wish to prevail in the world?  What security environment is most in accord with the interests of the US?

            2) What steps should be taken in order to achieve those conditions?  what plan of action is most likely to bring about the desired conditions?

            3) What combination of the instruments of power best supports the chosen strategic alternative?

            4) What are the opportunity costs and risks associated with the preferred strategic alternative? 

            The security environment that would best ensure continued American security and prosperity is a liberal world order:  one characterized by economic liberalism and an expanding number of liberal democracies.  It is this sort of global environment that would seem to offer the best hope of continued peace and prosperity.   

            If a liberal world order is our desired outcome, what approach best achieves it?  Although several taxonomies exist, the one I will use here describes four alternative grand strategies: strategic disengagement, cooperative security, selective engagement, and primacy.[viii]  These alternative approaches provide a useful point of departure. 

Strategic Disengagement 

            Although often dismissed as impossible in today’s world, strategic disengagement commands the visceral support of many Americans.  Indeed, in the absence of an alternative, it may be the default grand strategy.   

            Advocates of strategic disengagement contend that no state or coalition is capable of developing the aggregate power necessary to threaten the well-being of the United States.  The United States is an extraordinarily secure country, with weak and/or friendly neighbors, protected by two oceans and the fact that any aggressor who wishes to attack the US homeland must overcome the “tyranny of distance.”  In addition, the United States controls about one quarter of the world’s economic output, nearly twice that of its closest competitor.[ix] 

            For advocates of strategic disengagement, there is no justification for intervention abroad.  Threatened states have the economic wherewithal to defend themselves, either alone or in combination with others.  Indeed, intervention abroad is itself the source of most US security problems.  Were the US to stand aloof from the squabbles of others, it would not attract the attention of others.  According to Posen and Ross, “The strong try to deter the United States; the weak to seduce it; the dispossessed to blame it.”[x]  This reasoning applies in spades to terrorism, which is an asymmetrical response to the use of US power abroad.[xi] 

            Disengagement would be political and military, not economic.  As a result, many of the burning issues of current US foreign policy, e.g. the future of NATO, the Middle East Peace Process, UN peacekeeping missions, etc., would disappear.  The “troops and the money” would come home.  The US military establishment would shrink.  Future force structure would emphasize fundamental, as opposed to extended, nuclear deterrence, homeland defense against air attack and ballistic missiles, and small conventional forces.  On the other hand, nothing would preclude Americans from engaging in international trade, but they would do so at their own risk. 

            While strategic disengagement is seductive, it makes a number of unwarranted assumptions.  First among these is the assumption that the natural condition of the world is peace and prosperity, and that if the US were to disengage, other players would not try to fill the vacuum.  It is very likely that the disengagement of the United States would unleash military competition as potential hegemonic powers vie for regional dominance.   

            Countries heretofore defended by the United States would feel compelled to arm, and in many regions previously characterized by relative peace and prosperity, e.g. Western Europe and East Asia, the “security dilemma” would manifest itself as arms racing.  If prosperity depends on stability, and stability depends on some level of security, a US retreat would in all likelihood lead to a less secure and less prosperous world. 

Selective Engagement 

            Advocates of selective engagement share many of the assumptions of those who favor strategic disengagement, e.g. the United States is an extraordinarily secure state due to geography and nuclear weapons.  However, the primary focus of selective engagement is prevention of war among the great powers, i.e. those states possessing the preponderance of industrial and military potential.[xii]  Selective engagement seems to be the preferred strategy of the Bush administration. 

            While advocates of disengagement argue against US intervention anywhere outside of North America, advocates of selective engagement would limit US military and diplomatic engagement to critical regions of Eurasia, viz. Western Europe, Northeast Asia, and because of oil, the Middle East/Persian Gulf. There are at least two variations of selective engagement.  The first is the traditional geopolitical policy, arising from Realist international relations theory, of providing a counterbalance to the emergence of a potential hegemon capable of dominating the Eurasian continent. 

            The second variation of selective engagement is an attempt to adopt a discriminative policy toward the developing world: the idea of a “pivotal state.”  A pivotal state is “a hot spot that could not only determine the fate of its region but also affect international stability.”[xiii]    

            Selective engagement envisions the use of diplomatic and military instruments in order to ensure that peace prevails among the great powers.  To that end, it envisions alliances, both bilateral and multilateral, as means of linking US interests to the interests of the other great powers.   

            Since resources are limited, the United States cannot afford to fritter away its force structure in peacekeeping operations on the geopolitical periphery of the world.  The periphery is important only to the extent that it directly affects the well being of the industrialized “core.”  This underlies the logic of the pivotal state, permitting the US to employ the military instrument for deterring or fighting regional war, not as a constabulary force. 

            There are a number of problems with selective engagement.  The first arises from its Realist roots.  Selective engagement posits a strategic logic based on the emotionless calculation of power politics.  Regime questions have little bearing on the practice of the strategy.  Such an approach is alien to the US political tradition.[xiv] 

            Another problem arises from the fact that, in ignoring a great deal of the world, selective engagement creates the same sort of vacuum that strategic disengagement does. Those areas of the globe not “selected” by the United States will be characterized by instability, leading to the same outcome as strategic disengagement:  the emergence of security dilemmas and arms racing. 

            Some advocates of selective engagement stipulate that certain parts of the periphery are so important to the security of the core, e.g. the Persian gulf, that the US must be willing to intervene there.  But there are no clear rules that delineate the more important parts of the periphery from the less important.  As Barry Posen and Andrew Ross observe, selective engagement “gives its least precise positive guidance on matters that will most commonly figure prominently in the media, and hence in the public debate on US foreign policy.”  Far from simplifying foreign policy choices, selective engagement in practice will require extended public debate on each alternative. 

Cooperative Security 

            Selective engagement and strategic disengagement are based on the assumption that peace is divisible: conflict in one region will not necessarily affect the peace and prosperity of others.  Cooperative security starts from the reverse premise: a high level of “interdependence” makes it likely that the impact of conflict in one place will extend far beyond the local environs.  This interdependence takes a number of forms: informational, environmental, economic, and cultural.  Terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are two of the most obvious examples of how problems in one area can have an impact in another.[xv] 

            Cooperative security goes well beyond collective security.  Collective security is reactive.  It is designed to punish by means of collective military action a member who violates the sovereignty of another.  A cooperative security system seeks to institutionalize mechanisms for preventing aggression in the first place.  By means of preventive diplomacy and confidence-building measures, a cooperative security regimes increases transparency and trust among states, removing them from the horns of the security dilemma.  Cooperative security is to collective security as preventive medicine is to acute care. 

            Advocates of cooperative security believe that the world is ripe for such a system.  The end of the Cold War and the apparent triumph of liberal political and economic principles provide a rare window of opportunity for cementing a cooperative system into place.   Additionally, the instruments necessary to the success of a cooperative security system are available: 1) the increasing importance and reach of international institutions; 2) the development of preventive diplomacy as an improvement on traditional collective security; 3) the existence of a mature arms control regime; and 4) a decisive military-technological superiority in the hands of the United States, making it possible to defeat an adversary in short order while incurring low casualties. 

            While cooperative security represents an advance over collective security, the approach as generally conceived is still flawed.  These flaws result from the apparent assumption that interdependence and cooperation have replaced competition in international affairs.   It is useful to remember that the last time the world was as “interdependent” as it is now was on the eve of World War I.  In his memoir The World Crisis, Winston Churchill mocked this sort of fatuous optimism as it manifest itself during the Agadir crisis of 1911, which although it was peacefully resolved, marked another milestone on the road to Armageddon: 

            “[War] is too foolish, too fantastic, to be thought of in the 20th Century ....Civilization has climbed above such perils.  The interdependence of nations in trade and traffic, the sense of public law, the Hague Convention, liberal principles, the Labour Party, high finance, Christian charity, common sense have rendered such nightmares impossible. Are you quite sure?  It would be a pity to be wrong.”[xvi] 

            There is no more reason to believe that the international security environment is naturally less competitive than it has been in the past. Anarchy still prevails in the international system, meaning that the realm of international politics is one of “self-help” in which each state is the arbiter of its own security requirements.  Insofar as a cooperative international society exists, it is because the hegemonic power of the United States underwrites it.  

            Most advocates of cooperative security acknowledge the central role of the United States in the creation and maintenance of such a system, but then act as if the United States should subordinate its power and interests to other actors in the international political system, e.g. international institutions such as the United Nations and non-governmental and trans-national organizations.  The fact is that what most analysts call cooperative security depends on preponderant US power and the willingness of the United States to use it on behalf of a community of liberal interests.   

            As Donald Kagan has observed, history seems to indicate: 

that good will, unilateral disarmament, the avoidance of alliances, teaching and preaching the evils of war by those states who...seek to preserve peace, are to no avail. 

     What seems to work best...is the possession by those states who wish to preserve peace of the preponderant power and of the will to accept the burdens of and responsibilities required to achieve that power.[xvii] 

This is called primacy. 

Primacy 

            Primacy hold that the key to future peace and prosperity is for the United States to maintain the power position it held at the end of the Cold War.  The central purpose of primacy is preventing the emergence of a potential new rival along the lines of the former Soviet Union.  In the words of a draft of the Bush administration’s Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) that subjected to much ridicule after it was leaked to the press in March 1992, the US must “endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power...Our strategy must now refocus on precluding the emergence of any potential future global competitor.”[xviii] 

            Primacy is based on hegemonic stability theory, which holds that  

fundamental ...international trade based on the liberal principles of comparative advantage and the division of labor does not just occur through the actions of a global “invisible hand.”  Instead, economic openness only arises in the presence of a hegemonic power, a state willing and able to provide the world with the collective goods of economic stability and international security.  A state will only adopt the leadership role of hegemon when it is in its national interest to do so.  In short, the theory of hegemonic stability rests on two propositions:  (1) order in world politics is typically created by a single dominant power, and (2) the maintenance of order requires continued hegemony.[xix] 

According to the theory of hegemonic stability, a decline in relative US power could create a more disorderly, less peaceful world.  

            The precedent for the United States is the decay of Pax Britannica, which, many believe, created the necessary, if not sufficient conditions for the two world wars of the twentieth century.  As British hegemony declined, smaller states that previously had incentives to cooperate with Britain “defected” to other powers, causing the international system to fragment.  The outcome was depression and war.[xx]  The decline of American power could lead to a similar outcome.  In the words of Sam Huntington,  

the maintenance of US primacy matters for the world as well as for the United States.... 

A world without US primacy will be a world with more violence and disorder and less democracy and economic growth than a world where the United States continues to have more influence than any other country in shaping global affairs.  The sustained international primacy of the United States is central to the welfare and security of Americans and to the future of freedom, democracy, open economies, and international order in the world.[xxi] 

            Critics claim that it is futile for the United States to pursue primacy for several reasons.[xxii]  First, the very economic system that the hegemonic power of the US underwrites leads to the diffusion of the economic and technological instrument upon which the United States depends to maintain its preponderant power.  Thus it is likely that, despite the best efforts of the US, other great powers will arise. 

            Second, despite the fact that US hegemony is qualitatively different from the hegemonies of the past in that it eschews territorial conquest, US power, benevolent as it may be, is likely to engender resentment on the part of other states. One consequence will be increasing resistance to US leadership, possibly undermining the various multilateral institutions that the US requires in order to ensure that it does not bear the burden of international security alone.  Another, more serious consequence might be that disaffected states will attempt to balance against the US.  

            Finally, there is the temptation of what Paul Kennedy calls “imperial overstretch.”[xxiii]   There may be a tendency to argue that if a certain level of power is good, more power is better.  For primacy to be effective, it would be necessary for the United States to maintain such overwhelming power that others would not even think of challenging it.  One consequence of this may be that at some point, commitments far outstrip the resources the public is willing to provide for defense.  Another is that potential adversaries may employ asymmetric, cost-incurring strategies to increase the US defense burden. 

            This leads to the final objection to primacy: it requires a level of public commitment that may not be possible to achieve in a democratic society in the absence of an identifiable threat.  Without such a commitment, it is impossible either to fund security needs or to use US power abroad.  Obstacles to such a commitment include economic complacency and the erosion of a commonly accepted understanding of US national interests. 

            Despite these very serious objections, primacy offers the best hope for achieving US national interests in the world, both today and in the future. Without a grand strategic vision that seeks to shape the security environment as primacy does, policy-makers are left in a reactive mode, rushing from one crisis to another. 

A Strategy of US Global Leadership 

            Primacy can be caricatured as a “go-it-alone” approach to world affairs in which the US intimidates both friends and allies, wields power unilaterally, and ignores international institutions.  The strategy presented here can be characterized as a “benevolent” primacy, one in keeping with the liberal political traditions of the United States, but one that recognizes the world as a dangerous place in which peace is maintained ultimately by the power of the strong.   

            This form of primacy is based on the assumption that US power is good not only for the United States itself but also for the rest of the world.  The point is that the United States can be fully secure and prosperous only in a world where everyone is secure and prosperous.  Such a liberal world order is possible only if the United States is able and willing to make the effort to create and maintain it. 

            A grand strategy of primacy through US global leadership does not require unilateral US action everywhere. Realistic primacy depends on the interaction of Churchill’s “two As,” arms and alliances. To employ a common analogy, the US is not so much the world’s policeman as it is the world’s sheriff who organizes the posse to maintain order: alliances, coalitions, and the various international institutions that create, at least in some parts of the world, an international society, the sine qua non of cooperative security.  And it does not mean that all regions of the world are of equal importance to the United States: a strategy by definition implies priorities. 

Diplomatic Strategy 

            The overarching goal of US foreign policy is to create and maintain a liberal world order.  This goal is best achieved by creating and securing a commonality of interests among a broad array of other states, while deterring the use of force by potential aggressors.   

            There is a clear “ideological” character to a diplomatic strategy associated with primacy.  It does not subscribe to the notion of moral equivalence among states.  Republican government is better for its citizens than other forms and because the United States is a republic, US leadership is better for the world as a whole than the alternatives.  

            As a consequence, the grand strategy presented here favors the expansion of liberal democratic principles and practices over the expansion of illiberal ones.  But this diplomatic strategy is realistic in that it recognizes the impossibility of expanding these principles by force. For practical purposes, a diplomatic strategy of primacy recognizes that regional powers possess security zones, within which it is imprudent to threaten to use US power. It does not “presume that the goal of international order means the prevention of regional spheres (except our own).”[xxiv]  

            The diplomatic strategy presented here does not mandate a single approach to the world.  It recognizes that in certain parts of the world, viz. Western Europe, multilateral cooperative security structures exist; that in others, e.g. East Asia, a commonality of interest sufficient to support bilateral relations but not multilateral structures prevails; and that in still others, there are few prospects for cooperation.  A discriminating diplomatic strategy should seek to strengthen and expand cooperative structures where they exist, and to take advantage of whatever opportunities may arise to develop them where they do not. 

            Thus it is possible to support NATO expansion into Central Europe but recognize that further expansion into Eastern Europe may be “a bridge too far,” expanding US-NATO commitments and threatening a Russian security zone beyond what resources and the public will may realistically support.  For Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Partnership for Peace and OSCE will have to fill the bill. 

            This diplomatic strategy cannot be separated from the other instruments of national power.  Preventive diplomacy is predicated on the ability of the US to use its military forces as a magnet for attracting potential allies and partners.    A goal of this diplomatic strategy is to convince other actors in the international political system that because of the power and effectiveness of US military forces, “band wagoning” is preferable to anti-US balancing.  Finally, coercive diplomacy often employs economic sanctions and rapidly shades into the use of force. 

            The great obstacle to the development and implementation of a coherent diplomatic strategy of primacy is the subordination of US national interests to domestic interest groups, both ethnic and commercial.[xxv] This was a particular failing of the Clinton administration. 

            Consider the case of China.  The Clinton administration was very happy to allow US companies to help China increase its military power.  US companies have sold China advanced machine tools that its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) can use to build improved missiles and aircraft, super computers that can be used to simulate nuclear tests, and satellite and missile technology that has improved the accuracy of Chinese ballistic missiles, many of which are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. 

            US leadership must transcend American ethnic and commercial interests.   While recognizing the limits to US power posed by geography and culture, the US must not permit commercial consideration to dictate foreign policy. 

Economic Strategy 

            National security and economic prosperity are inextricably linked.  To secure its existence in the international system, a state must make strategic choices in both peace and war.  To implement a strategy, the state must have access to adequate economic resources.  Ultimately, it is impossible to separate economic power and political-military power.  Whatever enhances the commercial, financial, and industrial power of a state increases the military potential of that state. 

            There is a reciprocal relationship between economic prosperity and military power.  As Paul Kennedy observes, “...wealth is usually needed to underpin military power, and military power is usually needed to acquire and protect wealth.”[xxvi] 

            The dependence of military power on adequate resources seems clear.  But the reverse is also true.  Economic well-being and prosperity do not occur in a vacuum.  As Thomas Hobbes observed, there is no production without security.  Insofar as military forces provide security, they underwrite prosperity.  This relationship is summed up by Colin Gray: 

The post-1945 eventual prosperity of OECD members undoubtedly supported security regimes and arrangements of a kind strongly reinforcing of economic progress. But, the entire OECD experience, indeed the whole fabric of what used to be called western economic life, has been underwritten by the military protection provided largely by the United States.[xxvii] 

            Problems arise, of course, if security commitments outstrip available economic resources.  Paul Kennedy has concluded that imperial overstretch, the mismatch between capabilities and commitments has been a major factor in the decline of once great powers.   

            It is possible to take advantage of such a mismatch between an adversary’s economic power and military strategy.  Some observers attribute the rapid collapse of the USSR in 1990 to a US grand strategy that identified the weakness of communist economic organization as a strategic center of gravity upon which to focus the main US security effort.  This strategy exploited the economic mismatch between the US and the Soviet Union: while the US spent around 6.3 percent of a large and growing gross domestic product (GDP) on defense, the USSR spent a considerably larger portion of a much smaller economy on security. 

            There are two components of an economic strategy of primacy. The first is to take the steps necessary to sustain non-inflationary economic growth at home not only to ensure the prosperity of US citizens, but also to preserve US military and technological dominance abroad.  The second is to employ the economic instrument as both a carrot and a stick in the international arena. 

Military Strategy and Force Structure 

            The purpose of military strategy is to secure national interests and to attain the objectives of national policy by the application of force or the threat of force.  Military strategy is dynamic, reflecting the changing circumstances and other factors that influence strategy.   

            A state’s military strategy operates in peacetime as well as during war.  In peacetime, military strategy provides a guide to what Sam Huntington calls “program decisions”--the strength of military forces, their composition and readiness, the number type and rate of development of weapons; and “posturing”--how military forces are deployed during peacetime to deter war and carry out other mission (Clausewitz’s “preparation for war”).  In wartime, military strategy guides the employment of military forces in pursuit of victory (Clausewitz’s “war proper”).[xxviii] 

            A state’s approach to its security can take the form of either strategic pluralism or strategic monism.  The former “...calls for a wide variety of military forces and weapons to meet a diversity of potential threats.”  In contrast, the latter refers to primary reliance on a single strategic concept, weapon, service, or region.  Strategic monism “presupposes an ability to predict and control the actions of possible enemies.”[xxix] 

            Strategy answers the question: what plan will best achieve the ends of national security, given scarce resources for defense?  The answer to this question serves as a guide to employing current forces and planning future forces. 

            In theory, the strategy-force planning process is very logical: To execute a chosen strategy, certain strategic requirements must be fulfilled.  To fulfill these requirements, military planners develop operational concepts and the military capabilities to implement them.  These operational concepts and required military capabilities should then drive the acquisition of forces and equipment.  Throughout the process, the planner must constantly evaluate any risk that may be created by a potential ends-means mismatch.[xxx]  In reality, strategic decisions are often subordinated by the domestic political process to what Sam Huntington calls “structural” considerations.[xxxi]           

            Strategic requirements have evolved considerably since the end of the Cold War, requiring us to reevaluate the interrelationship among ends, means, and the security environment.  Potential mismatches between ends and means create risks.  If the risks resulting from an ends-means mismatch cannot be managed, we must reevaluate and scale back the ends, increase the means, or otherwise adjust our strategy. 

            The military strategy of the Clinton administration failed for two reasons. First, as a result of the incoherence arising from the administration’s general approach to security, the strategy often did not establish priorities, leading policy makers to expend US forces in open-ended areas of only marginal importance to the United States.  Second, although its security agenda was very ambitious, the Clinton administration substantially under funded defense. The resulting policy-resources mismatch created both readiness problems and continued delays in necessary modernization. 

            A strategy of primacy through global leadership is militarily demanding.  It must enable us to lead coalitions to deter aggression and win if deterrence fails, restore order to unstable regions, support international law, and enforce peace in regions of vital interest to the United States. Primacy through global leadership requires a flexible military strategy and a force structure able to respond to contingencies across the entire spectrum of conflict.  These forces must be able to execute four basic missions: deterrence, both nuclear and conventional, constabulary operations, the projection of power to areas of importance to the US, and homeland defense. 

The Strategic Requirements of Primacy 

            The central requirement generated by a strategy of primacy is to be able to shape the security environment in order to sustain a stable international order and prevent the emergence of a hostile global competitor.  The main constraint faced by the United States in meeting this requirement is geography.  Since most threats to international order have arisen on the Eurasian land mass, the US must be able to influence actors there.  To do so requires dealing with the “tyranny of distance.”  Therefore a cornerstone of the strategy presented here will be to maintain bilateral and multilateral relations with allies and friends on the littorals of Eurasia.   

            By the nature of its geographical position, US strategy must focus on Eurasia and US forces must be expeditionary.  To reassure friends and allies and deter/defeat adversaries, especially on the Eurasian landmass, the US must maintain the capability to project power over substantial distances.  Sometimes it will be sufficient to project power by means of long range precision strike.  On other occasions it will be necessary to employ land forces--to be assured of achieving our national interests, it ultimately is necessary for the US to be a Eurasian land power.  But to be a Eurasian land power, the US must also be a global sea and air power. 

            Constabulary operations or “imperial policing” are essential to shaping the security environment and drawing allies into a cooperative security system. By thus helping to shape the security environment, constabulary operations may in fact reduce the chances that the sort of hostile adversary we fear will emerge in the future. 

            On the other hand, if the United States is to deter war, it must possess a credible war-fighting capability, and it certainly requires such a capability if deterrence fails.  The belief that the United States can reduce or even shift away from a war-fighting stance since the prospect of large-scale war is remote ignores the fact that war may very well be remote precisely because of the existence of a US war-fighting stance.[xxxii] 

            A strategy of primacy requires a balanced force that can be employed across the spectrum of conflict and prevail under diverse circumstances against adversaries employing a variety of strategies, including asymmetric strategies.  These forces must be able not only to prevail in war, but also reassure friends and allies and generally influence actors in those parts of the world of the greatest importance to the US, especially Eurasia. 

            These forces must be capable of operating jointly in all operational environments:  land, sea, air, space, and across the electromagnetic spectrum, both now and in the future.  Accordingly, while remaining of sufficient size and composition both to fight and win major theater wars and carry out constabulary operations in the present, this force structure must also be flexible enough to exploit new technologies, doctrine, organization, and operational concepts in order to maintain military preeminence in the future.  

Conclusion 

            This strategy will require a higher level of defense spending than in the recent past.  The fact is that the United States is a rich nation that acts poor. The US is currently spending about $300 billion on defense, which constitutes three percent of US GDP. There is a growing consensus that this level of spending is insufficient to fund even the force mandated by DoD’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).  For instance, the Service Chiefs have argued that they require $60 billion more than is now projected over the Five Year Defense Program (FYDP) in order to modernize the force. The Congressional Budget Office has projected a requirement for $90 billion more over the same period merely to ensure steady state procurement of the QDR’s legacy systems.[xxxiii]   

Critics complain that in absolute terms, this is as much as the aggregate defense budgets of the next five major military powers.  But this is misleading.  US military forces essentially provide an international “public good” by underwriting the security upon which global stability, interdependence, and ultimately prosperity depend.   If the US forces that provide this public good are stretched thin because they are under-funded, the result may be a decline in stability and prosperity. World War I illustrates how rapidly an interdependent world order can collapse if the rise of aggressive powers are not checked. 

            Given the contribution of US military power to a global prosperity which benefits the US disproportionately, it seems reasonable to suggest that the US should spend a least 4.5 percent of GDP on defense.  Several years ago, much was made of Paul Kennedy’s thesis of imperial overstretch and the suggestion that, in keeping with this thesis, the burden of US defense spending was dragging the US down relative to the other industrial powers.  The stagnation of the economies of other industrial powers, especially Europe and Japan, has taken much of the wind out of this argument.  But there is another flaw in the thesis that we should consider when considering the US burden of defense.   

            Kennedy contends that Great Britain was the victim of imperial overstretch.  But one can make the argument that it was not imperial overstretch that led to the decline of Britain, but the onset of a war Britain could not prevent: it was World War I that doomed the British empire, not the expenditures to maintain the empire.  In light of this observation, the burden on the US of its defense posture is significant, but the benefits of the resulting world order far outweigh the costs. 

            One obvious benefit of bearing this burden is the prevention of war.  4.5 percent of GDP is a small price to pay when we consider the alternatives.  During the peak years of World War II, US defense spending was nearly ten times greater than what we propose. US defense spending constituted 38.6 percent of GDP in 1943, 39.9 percent in 1944, and 40 percent in 1945, not to mention 280, 000 dead over the course of the war.  Clearly, the cost of preventing war is far less than the cost of fighting one, even if it results in victory.  And prevention of war is the objective of a grand strategy of primacy. 

         Footnotes