Back to Our Roots: Marines’ future in the Indo-Pacific

[Chrome Missiles]

Back to Our Roots: Marines’ future in the Indo-Pacific​

A decade of war has focused Marines’ minds on insurgency, culture, and the permutations of modern irregular warfare, but the Nation’s greatest strategic threats lurk between the lines of economic stories from the developing world and just beyond the future years defense program. The debate over the future of the Marine Corps is shaped largely by our recent history and attractive concepts, such as fourth-generation warfare.1 While tactics and technology are important, they must be predicated upon a strategic understanding of the world and states’ policy goals within it in order to be successful. The dominant feature of today’s strategic environment is socioeconomic transformation in the developing world and concomitant change in the world’s power structure.2 This transformation will prevail over most of this century, affecting patterns of warfare in all intensities. America, still the clearly predominant power, is seeing its relative advantage over other states decline. The Marine Corps, in concert with the Navy, must orient itself on the rising poles of economic and military power in the Indo-Pacific theater, with the primary tasks of securing this economic center’s vital littoral and maritime lines of communications and acting as a credible and sustainable deterrent force against hostile actions by regional powers, particularly China.

First, the Marine Corps’ strategic understanding of the challenges ahead should center on the dramatic shift of economic power to the East, including the Middle East, and the struggle of states and societies there to cope with it. This socioeconomic perspective should eschew the focus on culture above the tactical level as it clouds judgment by loading debate with an ideological perception of unchanging and irreconcilable cultures, rather than recognizing the malleability of culture for good and bad in the face of socioeconomic change. The Indo-Pacific theater, stretching from the coasts of Africa and Arabia roughly to the Kuril-Japan-Philippines-Indonesia line, will be the central front of regional power economic and security competition as rising powers vie over trade, resources, and lines of communications between Africa, the Middle East, and Asia proper. This competition will take place almost exclusively in maritime and littoral spaces, demanding that the Corps return to its roots. Second, the reality that America’s relative power advantage is waning should drive a paradigm shift toward a much more frugal approach to military operations and the strategic expenditure of power. While many of the most critical decisions in this realm are made at the national strategy and policy level, the Marine Corps is uniquely suited to correct the decadence that has been expending our national power at an alarming rate with little impact on mission accomplishment.

Coping With a Return to Normalcy

America’s period of unprecedented dominance, which shaped the peaceful and prosperous postwar world, is in transition as the world’s economic center of gravity shifts from the Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific.3 As a German officer noted to Frederich Engels in the 1880s, “The basis of warfare is primarily the economic life of peoples.”4 That economic life is changing greatly in the East, driving destabilizing societal changes and remaking the international power structure in which the United States is the strongest state in a much unrulier cast of rising powers.

America will still be the world leader but with less of a power advantage. Its developed world allies are growing weaker from domestic fiscal and political troubles, meaning status quo leaders will have less leverage against regional powers seeking change. The last time the world saw this unstable power structure was between the World Wars, when British hegemony faded, the United States was ascendant but remained in relative isolation, Germany made its play for world domination, and Japan sought to carve out regional dominance in the Pacific.5 The results need not be so dramatic, but in this transformation we are experiencing what historian Paul Kennedy calls a return to “normalcy,”6 in which America is no longer a hyperpower but only the strongest state in a group of powers likely to come into conflict.

The heart of global commerce is moving to routes that stretch from the oil fields inland of the Arabian Sea, through the littoral regions of India and China and the sea lines of communications (SLOCs) that serve them, and to the islands and coastal states of Southeast Asia. This crossroads of world commerce is tied to other theaters by water as well. The Indian Ocean stretches to emerging markets in Africa, the Bab el-Mendeb Strait and the Suez connect the Indo-Pacific to the massive European market, and the vast expanse of the Pacific connects Asia to the Americas, especially the political and economic opportunities of South America. This is China’s backyard. India’s star is rising in the region as well, but its development is more private sector-driven and less militaristic. Iran, situated on the Persian Gulf and the critical Strait of Hormuz, pursues asymmetric maritime and littoral capabilities at one end of the theater. North Korea’s weapons are a significant and unpredictable threat at the other end. Extraregional powers have interests in the Indo-Pacific too. Russia continues to maintain some blue water capability, in addition to strategic missile, bomber, and patrol capabilities. He who controls the Indo-Pacific controls the future.

Chinese maritime commerce in 2020 will exceed $1 trillion, and 75 percent of its oil will come via the sea.7 The constrained SLOCs between China, her resources, and her markets are a critical vulnerability that has Chinese strategists combining 19th century naval theories with Maoist concepts of asymmetry. Chinese strategists see American hegemony as potentially hostile and desire capabilities to selectively deny access to the Indo-Pacific8 and to police it on their own. While not officially acknowledged, Chinese strategists have staked out phase lines on their sea flank consisting of first (Kurils, Japan, Ryukus, Taiwan, Philippines, and Indonesia), second (Japan, Bonins, Marianas, and Palau), and even third (Hawaii and other U.S. mid-Pacific bases) island chains9 as markers of China’s encirclement and antiaccess goals. The second chain encompasses China’s “near seas,” ranged by ballistic missiles, including a new “carrier killer” missile.10 Chinese capabilities to this end, especially if considered beyond 2020, are improving and present both challenge and opportunity for the Marine Corps.

Several phenomena contribute to a rising likelihood of conflict starting around 2020. The opportunity presented by America’s self-induced power expenditures in the past decade and what Chinese analysts “gleefully” see as impending defeat in Afghanistan11 has brought increasing use of the term “multipolarity” in Chinese publications. Some speculate that America’s recent emphasis on security cooperation likewise reflects a realization that our capabilities do not match our ambitions in the region.12 This perception of a weakened and distracted America will encourage aggressive policies during the fleeting window of opportunity before China faces significant domestic challenges within the coming decades. Its one-child policy means that it faces an aging and soon-to-decline population, while its rapid growth has left behind a significant portion of the population. Inequality and corruption are bringing some insiders to question the sustainability of China’s political and economic model of growth.13 The generation now coming to power was shaped in the significantly nationalist milieu that followed the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, producing an expectation of Chinese dominance and a return to its rightful place as a world leader in their lifetime. Leaders seeking to sustain growth and divert domestic discontent may choose aggressive nationalistic foreign policies if their alternatives are not properly shaped through a combination of diplomacy and deterrence.

Preparing for Greater Challenges

The transitions in the world’s economic and power structure laid out above provide clear indications of the Corps’ likely future role and the frugal calculus that is required to avoid further depleting national resources. The Corps must continue to be an expeditionary force capable of operating across the spectrum of war, but likely developments suggest key areas of focus. Afghanistan will require small wars skills in the near term, which must be retained to deal with the effects of socioeconomic transition kindled into proxy wars by regional powers or transnational movements. Additionally, the Corps will continue to have equity in theater functional and contingency plans, especially humanitarian assistance/disaster relief and noncombatant evacuation operations. State collapse in Pakistan has been highlighted as a likely scenario in the near term, which would call on many of the above skills,14 but beyond securing nuclear material, strategic calculus dictates an extremely cautious approach to what would be a much more taxing entanglement than either Iraq or Afghanistan. Looking past these requirements, the Corps must orient itself on the challenge in the Indo-Pacific, which requires a frugal, truly expeditionary, and adaptive force capable of operating in the face of robust and asymmetric threats. In particular, the antiaccess threats and multiple chokepoint straits in the region require a Corps capable of establishing and defending advanced bases near key ports and sea lanes, operating in a distributed and maneuverable manner in high-threat environments, and maintaining the tempo of its operations in the face of jamming and defeat of communications and intelligence systems, including space-based systems. While other Services will seek high-end technological solutions, the Marine Corps should pursue intelligent capabilities and doctrines more likely to be sustainable over time and in the face of future conflict.

The Nation and the Corps can best maintain access, build equity, and gain insight into the region through security cooperation and engagement over the next 5 to 10 years. Near the end of that period, small wars capabilities will likely be called for again as regional powers seek to gain influence by proxy in lower end conflicts. America, however, should judiciously avoid staking her prestige on state-building projects based on the ideology of democracy promotion. Involvement and objectives should be carefully circumscribed to serve key interests and conserve power for more significant challenges on the horizon.

The likelihood of significant conflict will begin to rise somewhere around 2020, growing into midcentury. The United States will face the proliferation of strategic antiaccess weapons to regional powers and precision antiship and improved surface-to-air missile systems to virtually all threat states and many nonstate actors. While China is pursuing late-generation capabilities and attempting to expand her influence across the theater, strategists recognize that they are still well behind American capabilities. For this reason, influential analysts promote an emphasis on “informationalized” and space weapons to create a nonlinear and “noncontact” threat well past the first island chain, as well as “attack capabilities for battle operations on exterior lines.” This line of thinking seeks to outflank American air capabilities by building a “powerful navy that possesses relative space superiority,”15 while attacking air bases with ballistic missiles and aircraft carriers with the recently fielded Dong-Feng-21D (CSS–5 Mod–4) “carrier killer” missile system. For full effect, these systems require integration with over-the-horizon intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems that, once combined and fielded in sufficient numbers, pose a significant threat to U.S. assets in the Pacific and may overwhelm antiballistic missile defenses through sheer numbers. While some analysts feel these threats currently fall short of their advertised capabilities, the fielding of the CSS–5 Mod–4 was “much earlier than expected,”16 giving China years to improve before conflict is likely. What’s more, China need not achieve global parity with the United States to achieve its regional goals.

In the face of likely threats and threat intentions, the Corps should focus on several capabilities. The antiaccess missile threat demands the ability to distribute forces, particularly aviation assets and naval support facilities, to multiple forward locations in the case of conflict. The Corps must be prepared to secure, defend, and operate from austere advanced bases, continuing to develop operational maneuver and distributed operations capabilities in order to project and disperse combat power. This capability must include the rapid movement of aviation assets and their ability to operate on short, unimproved, and rapidly repaired runways without ponderous support requirements. The importance and channelized nature of SLOCs in the Indo-Pacific requires a focus on rapidly securing their land flanks, particularly in straits and in the face of mobile surface-to-air and antiship missiles and swarming small boat tactics with the possibility of suicide attacks. When considering such threats, the Corps and the Nation should recognize that the kamikaze threat was swarming and asymmetric, but the stakes of the conflict merited accepting it. Finally, the Corps must account for the defense of islands and straits against future, if less capable, amphibious threats.

The nature of the theater and the threat demand the agility of island hopping without a prohibitive logistical tail. Today’s Corps must regain this agility in mindset, doctrine, and equipment. Distributed operations require robust fire support, especially from aviation assets that must be capable of operations in both a high threat and an austere expeditionary environment. At face value, the Corps’ focus on manned short takeoff and vertical landing platforms answers the mail, but the reality has not lived up to the photo opportunities in combat operations. Furthermore, the cost of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) and other high-end capabilities, when used as single solutions, do not provide the ideal return on investment when the platforms’ full capabilities will only be needed in select scenarios by a limited number of aircraft if properly organized and tasked. These capabilities also make little sense as today’s “daily driver” when paying astronomical high-end flight hour costs for mundane missions. We are flying the wings off of expensive platforms, which will only become truer with the JSF.

Instead of seeking only transformational (and transformationally expensive) platforms as the sole solution for the force, a mix of more mundane platforms, ranging from armed utility turboprop aircraft to armed unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), is warranted. These platforms can be transformationally equipped, integrated, and employed with the proper vision. Simpler plug-and-play platforms would give the Service greater numbers, greater flexibility, and a deterrent force that is sustainable fiscally and technologically. If air superiority or advanced integrated air defense systems are the problems, there will be joint fixed-wing assets on hand to deal with them, augmented by a small contingent of Marine JSFs. As Under Secretary of the Navy Robert O. Work points out, Marines must embrace the fact that future “theater entry missions” will be joint in nature,17 which should be a premise for reducing redundancy in procurement of high-end capabilities.

In particular, the Corps should lead the way in the transition from manned to unmanned close air support (CAS) and antiair warfare platforms to the maximum extent possible. Rather than taking the Marine aviator “out of the loop,” this is removing the aviator’s physiological limitations and protection requirements to a ground station where he can have much more robust situational awareness tools. While some manned aircraft must be retained for specific and dynamic CAS situations and to help control UAS flights, armed UASs can generally provide greater return on investment. In today’s fight, the Corps could use the long dwell time of a UAS armed with precision weapons and an electrooptical sensor capable of positive identification and designation of difficult targets. In a high-intensity conflict, the absence of an onboard pilot reduces weight for more capable sensors, avionics, and countermeasures, while improving performance capabilities and increasing expendability.

The Corps of the future must also be better able to operate in a communications, global positioning system, and satellite jam/defeat environment. The United States can expect denial of use of some of its “big wing” high-value airborne assets and may even see carrier-based aviation significantly impacted. Emission control measures on high-value platforms necessitated by threat sensors will likewise degrade the capabilities of our highly communications-dependent forces. Larger numbers of UASs can be part of a network of air and ground nodes that make up a command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence (C4I) cloud that would be much harder to attack with cyber, electronic, and information weapons. The Corps must make use of technology to improve the resilience of its C4I systems, but it must also live up to its doctrinal adherence to centralized command and decentralized control, fighting the micromanaging influence of and crippling dependence on technology.

Networks of airborne sensors in affordable and expendable UAS platforms will also help the Corps with the antiaccess problem, finding the deadliest mobile antiship and antiair weapons. A distributed solution is needed for amphibious forces as well. While the joint high-speed vessel and littoral combat ship are a step in the right direction, assault forces will need to be further distributed to smaller, faster, and less expensive vessels that will be more able to evade and overwhelm swarming threats and shorebased systems reduced by aviation action.

This incomplete and rudimentary collection of suggestions is meant only to point debate and innovation in a certain direction. While technology was highlighted, the human aspect of conflict is where Marines will continue to excel. For Marines steeped in the Middle East, study of and contact with the rest of the theater are a must. Our current robust engagement with U.S. Pacific Command partners is a good start, but many in the region are more concerned with the strategic balance of powers there than with engagement.18 Marine Corps capabilities must make up a significant portion of that balance, given the littoral and maritime challenges in the theater. Marines should seek to lead the way on military-to-military engagement of China, as well. At worst, this will illuminate the ways we need to innovate against a potential future foe.

Staying on Our Feet Until the Fight

Stemming the expenditure of America’s relative power advantage19 is central to sustainable deterrence, a key strategic consideration that has been little referenced in the conduct of American operations over the past decade. Stated bluntly by international relations scholar Stephen Walt:
Decades from now, historians will look back and wonder how the United States allowed itself to get bogged down in a long and costly war to determine the political fate of [a] landlocked country whose entire gross national product (GNP) is about a quarter the size of the New York city budget.20
A more telling figure is that yearly U.S. military spending in Afghanistan alone is nearly 10 times that country’s GNP. While a discussion of the merits of the strategic conduct of the campaign in Afghanistan, or its lack thereof, lies beyond the scope of this article, the costs of any policy goal must be carefully weighed and minimized whenever possible. Expenditures today may have a hefty price in human life and national interests tomorrow as they erode America’s relative power and encourage others to pursue aggressive policies, and thus they must be scrutinized.

Captivated by the Nation’s predominant power and seemingly benevolent ideology,21 American pundits often ignore such accounting, but the realist calculus of hard power and its expenditure is not lost on our foes. The United States willfully obliged al-Qaeda’s openly avowed intent to engage its enemy in a “bleeding war.”22 The 11 September 2001 attacks brought American forces to small arms range in the Muslim world, bogging America down in a decade of war, extracting over $1 trillion of military expenditures,23 inflicting significant attrition and overutilization of equipment, and precipitating the loss of prestige to various audiences. Today the United States is its own worst enemy, its ideology and waste driving spiraling expenditures (far too many of which have nothing to do with victory), much as President Ronald W. Reagan’s policies are believed to have done to the Soviet Union in the popular if questionable telling of the end of the Cold War. The Marine Corps must do all it can to stem the decline of American power by returning to a calculated, frugal, and zealously mission-focused expenditure of fiscal resources, manpower, and overall combat power in current conflicts. As we look toward the future, the watchword should be credible and sustainable deterrence of threats, signifying a much more diligent calculation of cost versus benefit across the range of operations, from procurement and personnel policy to doctrine and operational art. We must stay on our feet until the fight.

Marine leaders should do all they can to stem the hemorrhage at their level, yet the brunt of these changes must be shouldered by commanders and staffs above the battalion level. The Marine Corps has always been the most frugal of the Services, but this role is ever harder to faithfully pursue. The reasons were brilliantly satirized by The Onion, in which Gen James N. Mattis purportedly writes that the United States will never win in Afghanistan unless U.S. Central Command gets a pinball machine. The sacrifices made by the troops require the best that Congressional money can buy. “We’re talking multi-ball, frequent jackpots, a third flipper midway up the game board . . . . ”24 The reality behind the satire is that all sorts of gadgets and programs are sold with similar pleas. Often the programs are less ridiculous, sometimes only marginally, but the free money mindset is rampant. When told that an onbase construction project in Afghanistan was unneeded, one contracting officer recently stated, “It’s not our money, it is USFOR(A) [United States Forces Afghanistan] money,” to legitimize the expenditure. Such attitudes are mortgaging the future of our Nation through decadent carelessness.

Money is no small contributor to combat power and the economic health of the Nation. Nothing is more expensive than personnel. The Corps must be ruthless in rooting out wasteful personnel policies and returning Marines to the Operating Forces. It is the height of callousness to expect struggling taxpayers to fund the plethora of bands or the All Marine Chess Team when we also have our hand out for the most advanced equipment money can buy. Likewise, it is wrong to expect others to deploy again and again in their stead. Supporting Establishment billets, too, must be carefully scrutinized. Marines would rather have more trigger pullers by their side. Even in the Operating Forces, staff officers must be given a suppressant against the appetite for bloating staffs with individual augments that gut line units, impacting readiness and precluding Marines’ training, progression, and dwell time. We will not always have the luxury of gutting nondeployed units to fill staffs. If we will not be able to do so in the fight of our lives, there is no need to do it now. Coming challenges demand only the most sustainable and mission focused policies as the Nation enters what may be the most critical period of its history. The Marine Corps must serve the Nation and its own interests by leading the way in this dimension, rather than contributing to our hastened demise.

Conclusion

Whatever our vision of the future, it must be founded concretely upon possible geostrategic scenarios rather than abstract concepts centered on technology and tactics. This article has focused on China as the most significant threat on the horizon, but we must keep our eye on a range of others. Both Iran and North Korea possess dangerous weapons systems combined with fanaticism and erratic, if awkwardly rational, foreign policy. Iran can wreak havoc on the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, while North Korea can threaten commerce on two seas. India is currently a staunch ally, but that country could change dramatically in the coming decades. Nuclear armed and equipped with modern weaponry, India’s regional interests may clash with others as well. We are tangentially familiar with the perils of Pakistan and its confrontations with India, which become only more fearsome if Pakistan experiences a coup or state failure. Other prospects loom. A dictatorial and militaristic regime could emerge once again in the Arab Middle East or South America, and the United States could be called upon to rebut territorial aggression. In the least likely, but potentially worst scenario, a crisis-weakened European Union could fail, returning Europe to a patchwork of nations with conflicting interests. War on the continent within the next 50 years is not unthinkable. For all of these reasons, the Corps must maintain a global watch but should avoid Balkanizing itself into regional enclaves. Language and culture are important, but culture changes as society responds to changing economic situations, and ideological viewpoints of culture poison the cold calculus required in war. This century will witness some of the greatest socioeconomic transformations in history, and we must have the physical and intellectual agility to deal with change across the globe. When the Nation truly needs us, we will all be going to the same place, wherever that may be.


Maj Peter J. Munson
Back to Our Roots: Marines

 

[Chrome Missiles]

India is currently a staunch ally, but that country could change dramatically in the coming decades. Nuclear armed and equipped with modern weaponry, India’s regional interests may clash with others as well. We are tangentially familiar with the perils of Pakistan and its confrontations with India, which become only more fearsome if Pakistan experiences a coup or state failure.

This struck me as quite controversial. We don't know IF India is an ally. At-least not within public circles .

 

[Always Neutral]

This struck me as quite controversial. We don't know IF India is an ally. At-least not within public circles .

Well it would and could if a hawk like Gandhi took over and now decided BLA can be their new Mukti Bahani which has serious questions on US deployment in Agh? Say they don't toe the US line on Iran and Burma?

 

[Chrome Missiles]

Well it would and could if a hawk like Gandhi took over and now decided BLA can be their new Mukti Bahani which has serious questions on US deployment in Agh? Say they don't toe the US line on Iran and Burma?

I think a relatively stable and moderate pakistan is in everyone's interest.

 

[Gandhi G in da house]

Well it would and could if a hawk like Gandhi took over and now decided BLA can be their new Mukti Bahani which has serious questions on US deployment in Agh? Say they don't toe the US line on Iran and Burma?

US is now getting closer with Burma itself and that is the best way to deal with them . just make sure they are a democracy. Rest will fall into place. Same with Iran.

Iranians generally view US quite positively but by threatening war you hurt their nationalistic sentiments . support the people covertly in toppling the much hated regime and things will into place there as well .

Losing goodwill among the common people of both the countries will make sure you lose the countries forever . That is what India is trying to make sure doesn't happen in our relation with them .That is the best way .

 

[Chrome Missiles]

====deleted====

 

[Always Neutral]

US is now getting closer with Burma itself and that is the best way to deal with them . just make sure they are a democracy. Rest will fall into place. Same with Iran.

Iranians generally view US quite positively but by threatening war you hurt their nationalistic sentiments . support the people covertly in toppling the much hated regime and things will into place there as well .

Losing goodwill among the common people of both the countries will make sure you lose the countries forever . That is what India is trying to make sure doesn't happen in our relation with them .That is the best way .

I am not debating the best way forward? I stating the remote circumstances which could lead to fallout between USA and India. A stable Pakistan is not possible for the next 10 years.

 

[saurav]

Well it would and could if a hawk like Gandhi took over and now decided BLA can be their new Mukti Bahani which has serious questions on US deployment in Agh? Say they don't toe the US line on Iran and Burma?

India can not fight with every neighbor chanting Democracy- democracy . If and when Myanmar is ready for democracy, they will get it. Who are we to dictate them. India prefers to deal with democratic leadership. That does not mean we will not talk to them if they are not following democratic system of governance.

 

[Always Neutral]

India can not fight with every neighbor chanting Democracy- democracy . If and when Myanmar is ready for democracy, they will get it. Who are we to dictate them. India prefers to deal with democratic leadership. That does not mean we will not talk to them if they are not following democratic system of governance.

Again ur jumping in without reading the main article. Please re-read or chill. Its about India and US falling out and not democracy.

 

[saurav]

Again ur jumping in without reading the main article. Please re-read or chill. Its about India and US falling out and not democracy.

I was just giving my opinion on your statement regarding Myanmar..

 

[Chrome Missiles]

The primary focus of the article is on countering china , the relevance of the marine corp against this new adversary and setting our financial priorities right.

 

[Always Neutral]

I was just giving my opinion on your statement regarding Myanmar..

I have no problem with India and its relations with Burma. You are neighbors so you will do whats good for you but Burmas human rights may force US to have a different view point. Still it seems remote that US and India will fallout in the recent future.

 

[Chrome Missiles]

I was just giving my opinion on your statement regarding Myanmar..

This is an excerpt from the article

America, however, should judiciously avoid staking her prestige on state-building projects based on the ideology of democracy promotion. Involvement and objectives should be carefully circumscribed to serve key interests and conserve power for more significant challenges on the horizon.

 

[Always Neutral]

The primary focus of the article is about countering china , the relevance of the marine corp against this new adversary and setting our financial priorities right.

---------- Post added at 06:56 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:54 AM ----------



This is an excerpt from the article

But US cannot accept a Burma which lets China treat it as its backyard while India can as long as it tackles groups like ULFA

 

[Developereo]

This struck me as quite controversial. We don't know IF India is an ally. At-least not within public circles .

India feels it can play the major powers against each other to gain maximum benefit for itself, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, the fact remains that Russia will continue to be India's most trusted partner for quite some time. India needs America to help prop it up on the international scene and to counter China, so it will play along with American overtures.

The interesting thing will be the US reaction when it realizes it's been taken for a ride all this time. With China's growing economic importance in the region, countries will reassess their allegiances. In its blinkered obsession with China, it may well be that it's the US which gets used by nations around Asia Pacific.

There is none so foolish as the fool convinced of his own importance.