Over at the National Interest T.X. Hamnes has a nice critique of AirSea Battle, seemingly the Pentagon’s reigning strategy…sorry, operational concept…for dealing with a rising China and the problem of Anti-Access/Area Denial (for the official overview, see here). I expect I’ll be writing a bit on ASB during my time at the Duck, so I won’t try to engage in every debate in the first post. For now I’ll limit myself to one question Hamnes raises: does it make any sense to talk about an operational concept as isolated from strategy?
Some quick background. The argument that ASB is an operational concept, rather than a strategy, is a key point for those claiming that ASB is not the destabilizing offensive strategy its critics contend. ASB, in this argument, is not a strategy, but “an analysis of the threat and a set of classified concepts of operations (CONOPS) describing how to counter and shape A2/AD environments, both symmetrically and asymmetrically, and develop an integrated force with the necessary characteristics and capabilities to succeed in those environments.” You see, it’s a concept. There’s no enemy, certainly not the Chinese! There’s no specified end goal, such as controlling someone’s mainland or shipping lanes or whatnot. It’s just about dealing with A2/AD situations more efficiently.
How does one evaluate an operational concept apart from a larger strategy? I admittedly am having some trouble understanding this position. Operational concepts are effective only insofar as they fit with an overall military strategy, and we can only evaluate the effectiveness of an operational concept by understanding how it furthers strategic ends in terms of a well-defined threat. How are we supposed to evaluate whether ASB is effective if it fails to specify ultimate aims?
Moreover, do we expect somehow that ASB will not be seen as offensive because it is a mere operational concept? I was talking to a colleague about this recently, and neither of us could wrap our head around this logic.* Perhaps von Moltke was simply proposing a nice way to integrate railroads and the mass army and deal with the problem of overwhelming firepower. And blitzkrieg was merely designed to get tanks, infantry, and planes working well together for efficiently. Yes, in this light, it is indeed puzzling why France spent over a century worrying about Germany’s operational concepts.
This is not to say that ASB might not be a single operational concept considered appropriate to multiple threats and ends in international security. But even here, discussing strategic context is critical to evaluating the operational concept, and it is not helpful for ASB’s supporters to elide these larger questions of strategy.
*Much credit due to Paul MacDonald for these examples.
Doesn’t Mahan define naval strategy as what takes place before “contact”? If so I don’t know how that’s any different than an “operational concept” as you’ve described it.
I view this through the realist lens and tend to think China must be stopped before they gain the ability to project power worldwide. We need to think about possible Maneuver strategies and return to a grand strategy world outlook.
How exactly do you propose to ‘stop’ china?
I’m not sure where the confusion lies. The January 2012 “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense,” signed by President Obama lists “Project Power Despite Anti-Access/Area Denial Challenges” as one of the primary missions of the U.S. Armed Forces (pg. 4-5). It specifically states that China and Iran are pursuing A2/AD capabilities to counter U.S. power projection capabilities and the military will “ensure its ability to operate effectively in A2/AD environments.” It seems clear to me that ASB, as an operational concept, is being designed to support the U.S. strategic objectives of maintaining freedom of navigation (particularly in the Straits of Hormuz and East Asia) as well as maintaining U.S. capability to meet its mutual defense treaty obligations (i.e. Japan and South Korea). Again, I’m not sure why there is so much confusion as to how, at least in the minds of U.S. military planners, ASB as an operational concept is linked directly to U.S. national security strategy objectives.
Now, you can make an argument that even thinking about ASB is overly provocative and might serve to hinder those strategic objectives in the long run by triggering an unnecessary arms race, but that is a separate question. As a starting point I think U.S. military planners would argue that China’s adoption of an A2/AD strategy coupled with acquiring capabilities designed to specifically target U.S. power projection capabilities (i.e. DF-21D “Carrier Killer” ASBM) was the primary driver of the shift to an ASB operational concept in the first place.