Taming the War State: A New Defense Policy

By Col. Douglas Macgregor, Special to The Kennedy Beacon

The below was first published on the new open policy forum “Policies for the People.” Colonel Douglas Macgregor served in the US Army from 1976-2004. He later served as Senior Advisor to the Acting Secretary of Defense in the first Trump administration. He continues to advocate for a defense policy aimed at achieving global peace and strong national security. 

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

American political, economic and military global hegemony—sustained by America's past economic productivity, the dollar's reserve status, and the reliance on forward deployed American Military Power—is over. In a new world shaped by sweeping social, political and technological change America’s Warfare State is not only a poor strategic fit, but also financially and economically unsustainable.

U.S. National Defense and Foreign Policy must rank diplomacy and peaceful cooperation first over the use of military power. Besides nuclear weapons, which can only be deterred with nuclear weapons, none of America’s potential opponents pose a direct threat to the American homeland. In addition, if international terrorism and criminality remain a threat to America, then border security and tightly controlled immigration should be a top priority in national security.

These points notwithstanding, As Peter Drucker pointed out almost 30 years ago, “If you want something new, you must stop doing something old. People in any organization are always attached to the obsolete.” The U.S. Armed Forces are living within a structural and modernization framework that was codified in the 1947 National Security Act. This must change as soon as possible.

For anything to change in the near-term in national defense including real and meaningful reductions in the current $1 Trillion Dollar National Defense Budget, new national leadership must alter the strategic focus by replacing the 1947 National Security Act with new legislation. New National Security Legislation must move the posture of U.S. Forces away from incessant interventions in the affairs of other nations to a U.S.-Centric defense posture. The following five points highlight the new direction: 

1. Defend America First: Reserve the use of American Military Power for the Defense of U.S., American Citizens and identified vital strategic interests unless the U.S. is directly attacked by foreign State or non-State power. Defend the United States in the Western Hemisphere, Secure U.S. Borders, Coastal Waters, and Air Space. Missions involving self-defeating interventions to export democracy at gunpoint must end.

2. Maintain the strategic military power to ensure U.S. freedom of action in areas of strategic importance to the U.S. (access to global commons: high seas, the atmosphere, antarctica and outer space).

3. Establish an operational National Defense Staff with a Chief of Defense (includes a National Defense Acquisition Office that reports directly to the Chief of Defense and the Secretary of Defense). Develop and implement in parallel a refined Unified Command Plan to dramatically reduce unneeded overhead and improve responsiveness to National Command Authority.

4. Identify, Defend, and Maintain the scientific-industrial capacity, lines of communication, and reduced numbers of overseas bases required for the execution of the above tasks.

5. Build New Armed Forces for the 21^st Century: America needs a strong military designed to protect the United States in the 21^st Century, not an anachronistic and expensive industrial age structure with an enormous overhead, and very few fighters. The 21^st Century demands high lethality/low density forces.

Sir Winston Churchill said, “Failure in war is most often the absence of one directing mind and commanding will.” If the American People are to rectify the abysmal record of the American military in action since the end of the Second World War, change in organization and culture must result in the emergence of a new streamlined unified military command structure to the enormous expense of swollen headquarters overhead, single service thinking, modernization, culture, acquisition and R&D. 

Critical steps in this process include freezing all flag rank promotions pending a department wide Flag Officer Review. (A similar process should be implemented to address the inflated numbers of Special Executive Service (SES) billets.) Drafting a new unified command plan to consolidate existing commands into fewer numbers with better functionality.

And, finally, reshaping the bloated warfare state to defend America first demands the elimination of wasteful and redundant single service overhead, and support structures. This process requires the effective integration of new and existing warfighting capabilities across service lines. DOD must be directed to set up a 3-Star Joint Force Command (JFC) HQ at Joint Base Lewis-McChord with the goal of building the template for standing headquarters to execute integrated operations across the new regional unified commands.

The tectonic plates of the international system are shifting beneath America's feet, crushing Washington’s reactionary, postwar world order, giving rise to a new international system with new power centers and coalitions. Future operations to remove genuine security threats will not involve U.S. military occupations.

In this new setting, new national leadership must provide the American People with solutions are effective and sustainable. President Eisenhower’s 1958 prescription is a good guide for the future: “The purpose is clear. It is safety with solvency. The country is entitled to both.”

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