This Gang Is ‘Shooting’ Straight Enough

Each day that goes by in the Persian Gulf leads to new reports of weaknesses in U.S. military forces.

There are reports of divisions among planners as to how the task force should be commanded. There are reports over the delays in the modernization of American mine forces. World War II minesweepers have to be deployed halfway around the world. An assault carrier breaks down on its way to the region. U.S. warplanes fire air-to-air missiles and appear to miss. The largest naval task force since the Vietnam War has to be sent to the gulf to deal with what so far is a very minor threat.

Many of the resulting criticisms are individually correct. But before we accuse our entire defense Establishment of being the “gang that couldn’t shoot straight,” we need to examine our expectations, the nature of war, and what is really happening in the Persian Gulf.

To begin with, our expectations are far too demanding. We have accepted strategic commitments all over the world, then have failed to fund them adequately. We expect our military to maintain global nuclear purity and assume the burden of defending Western Europe and Japan and Northeast Asia and project power everywhere else in the world. At the same time, we fund the military to fight, at most, one of those wars, and Congress increasingly attempts to micromanage every decision from the modernization of a barracks to the choice of a weapon system.

We can’t have an all-volunteer-force structure and annual defense expenditures that are less than 75% of what is needed to meet all our commitments, and still have the readiness and effectiveness that we actually need. The end result is that American defense planning involves an endless series of compromises. We force our military forces to reduce or cancel the weapons and capabilities for which there is no immediate priority, and we ask each element of the forces and weapon systems to do too much. We can’t have it both ways.

We also need to understand the true nature of war. War is not an efficient business, and we have entered every war in our history unprepared for the specific conflict that followed.

In the Persian Gulf we are using military force in an area in which Iran has been fighting for seven years and has been building up its naval Revolutionary Guards units for at least two years. We are using equipment that has not been designed to fight in this specific region, and we also did not have forces tailored to fight in the gulf. Most of our newer weapon systems have never been tested in actual conflict, and the bulk of the manpower has never fought in any previous war. Things can and will go wrong.

It is absurd to expect complete and instant success. War is not predictable and controllable. The conditions are always new, changing and complex. Success always means improvising over time. No command structure in military history has ever been regarded as adequate, even by the major commanders participating in a victorious conflict. Weapon systems always fail to perform as predicted. As military analyst Edward N. Luttwak has pointed out, the difference between victory and defeat is generally the difference between 15% efficiency and 10% efficiency--not between 95% and 90% efficiency.

Finally, we need to realize that we are in the gulf for the long haul--until there is a lasting cease-fire or a peace. The United States should certainly have been far more ready to deal with the threat from Iranian mines. No one, however, could really anticipate whether Iran’s first test of our will would be mines, the taking of hostages, suicide attacks, striking at ships that we did not plan to escort, political insurgency like the Iranian uprising at Mecca, attacks on gulf political leaders or sabotage.

Even now no one can predict the next threat, and no one can totally eliminate our vulnerability to such Iranian action. We cannot provide all the military capabilities that we need to deal with every contingency. We have to concede Iran enough blows to clearly justify military retaliation. We can capitalize on Iran’s vulnerability to any major reduction in its oil exports or arms imports only if it gives us clear cause in the world’s eyes, and we must continue to emphasize the search for a cease-fire over substituting offense for defense.

Above all, we need to remember that our intervention in the gulf cannot be treated as another Lebanon, or even another Vietnam.

We are talking about a vital strategic commitment involving more than 50% of the world’s proven oil reserves. We are also talking about a presence that may well have to last until Iran and Iraq reach a peace or a cease-fire.

During the months or years that this will take, there will many more cases in which our military makes mistakes or is proved vulnerable. We cannot, however, go home and expect to stay a global power. In fact, we have to learn to accept the realities of our military commitments, or “the gang that can’t shoot straight” will end up being the gang that has to be perfect or isn’t allowed to shoot at all.