Last month, I was asked to describe what was missing from the report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. Released last October, the report was by far the most detailed government discussion of the future strategic nuclear threats the United States and its allies face and what should be done to mitigate them. Congress asked that it cover a long list of topics.
Although Congress asked the Commission to cover a long list of topics, one question Congress did not explicitly raise is whether or not the air war theories that have served as the foundation of American strategic planning for more than 70 years, will be as prominent in the next 10 to 20. The point of departure for my remarks is that they may not.
As I note in my talk, the central tenant of air war theory is that the capacity to physically obliterate an enemy’s military, industrial, and political or demographic capital enables a nation to get its adversaries to behave in peace without firing a shot or if they do misbehave, to quickly secure victory against them in war. Think of the fire bombings of Tokyo, the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the nuclear threats made throughout the Cold War.
Military scientists, however, are now considering how nations might be able to disable enemies without decimating them by reducing their will to fight through information campaigns and precisely targeting key military and infrastructure nodes with discriminate weapons to paralyze them in war.
If the world is moving toward the adoption of new generation warfare, how, if at all, might this change our approach to deterring our enemies? How, in turn, should these changes inform the priority Congress might place on spending on legacy weaponry versus space systems, drones, artificial intelligence, advanced computing, and information warfare? If China and Russia together will have more nuclear weapons than the United States and its allies, are there yet ways to dominate the military competition with them in a meaningful way? How, if at all, might this change the future of strategic weapons-related diplomacy?
I try to answer these questions and more in the attached videos. As always, I am curious to get your thoughts.
Click here for slides.
The Congressional Commission on America’s Strategic Posture was asked to do too much
The Commission’s first challenge was to find a unifying theme for all the questions they were tasked with answering. They made nuclear deterrence central
The report is sufficient if you believe century-old air war theory will be dominant for the next 100 years
There is good reason to believe, however, that air war theory is giving way to new generation warfare
How new generation warfare deterrence might differ and what it might consist of
Any truly competitive strategic plan entails taking serious risks — something the Pentagon has yet to fully consider
The United States and allies now need to start thinking and behaving like David did towards Goliath — we need to disable the eyes, ears, voices, and nervous systems of our enemies