Another thought on the QDR

When reading about the QDR for yesterday’s post, I came across something else I thought was really interesting. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates finds Cold-War era force planning “too confining.”

Here’s a short excerpt from the QDR:

“[P]ast defense reviews have called for the nation’s armed forces to be able to fight and win two major regional conflicts in overlapping time frames. These have been characterized as conflicts against state adversaries, typically employing conventional military forces. This QDR likewise assumes the need for a robust force capable of protecting U.S. interests against a multiplicity of threats, including two capable nation-state aggressors. It breaks from the past, however, in its insistence that the U.S. Armed Forces must be capable of conducting a wide range of operations, from homeland defense and defense support to civil authorities, to deterrence and preparedness missions, to the conflicts we are in and the wars we may someday face.

“In short, U.S. forces today and in the years to come can be plausibly challenged by a range of threats that extend far beyond the familiar “major regional conflicts” that have dominated U.S. planning since the end of the Cold War. We have learned through painful experience that the wars we fight are seldom the wars that we would have planned. For instance, in Iraq and Afghanistan, two theaters in which we are engaged simultaneously, we have seen that achieving operational military victory can be only the first step toward achieving our strategic objectives.”

This QDR then represents a dramatic shift in U.S. planning and strategy. The Cold War defined our international relations and our military strategy for two decades after it was over.

This also reflects the idea that we no longer live in a “bipolar” world or even a “unipolar” one, at least in terms of security. The threats and challenges we face no longer come in the form of peer states, but are now rogue challenges to our supremacy.

Contradictory defense outlook?

On Monday, President Obama laid out his fiscal year 2011 budget. The Pentagon also released the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Report, which is in sum an assessment of the U.S. military, its goals and its strategy.

Policy experts at AEI seem to think the President’s budget and the QDR are contradictory.

The simultaneous release today of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Report and the Fiscal Year 2011 budget proposal reveals the underlying contradiction at the heart of the Obama Administration’s national security policy.  As the second sentence of the QDR states, “first and foremost, the United States is a nation at war.”  But the remainder of the report and, more critically, the long-term budget, reflect an administration more interested in ending wars than winning them, and ready to “manage” American decline rather than preserving American leadership.

The last sentence could be flushed out in much more detail in regards to International Relations Theory – something I would like to do, but I don’t see how it’s possible considering I don’t have an IR class this semester. In brief, liberals (President Obama) make the argument that a hegemon isn’t needed to maintain the International system. Hegemonic realists, however, would argue quite the opposite. The exit question is this: is President Obama seriously “managing” American decline?

I seriously doubt any President or for that matter any American is with serious vigor thinking about managing the U.S. decline to less than the world’s only superpower – either relatively or in absolute terms. At least, I hope not.

Without further digression, I think President Obama does face the conflict of reconciling his approach to international relations with that of the broad American populace. I think it’s the commonsense view, if only because it has for so long been the only view, that if one person grows stronger, we grow weaker. President Obama defiantly declared in China that all countries could grow the pie together.

To conclude, it’s interesting to note the difference between the opening paragraphs of the QDR and what has been seemingly President Obama’s track on international relations and the role the U.S. military will play in the future. Certainly, President Obama is interested in ending our wars abroad. Does that mean he’s not committed to winning them? Not necessarily – that is entirely based on one’s definition of victory. I think the QDR most likely reflects a more “true to life” version of President Obama’s international relations theory.