How Many Wars Should the U.S. Fight at Once?
Michael O'Hanlon thinks the prevailing paradigm of preparing the U.S. to wage two major wars simultaneously is obsolete:
'Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has just said that he must continue, even in an era of severe defense-budget restraint, to plan U.S. ground forces with an eye toward being able to handle more than one at a time. This puts him right in the center of the modern U.S. defense-planning consensus.After the Cold War ended, defense secretaries as disparate as Cheney, Aspin, Perry, Cohen, Rumsfeld, and Gates (in other words, all of the last six) built their combat force structures around a two-regional-war logicâ??or at least that goal. They would usually describe the most likely adversaries as Saddam Hussein and the Kims of North Korea, though other scenarios were envisioned as well.
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What's interesting to note about this "two major war" construct is that at the time we actually were engaged in two major ground campaigns, we didn't do such a great job of it despite supposedly decades-worth of planning and investment. That's not because the U.S. wasn't able to deliver relatively swift defeats to enemy forces on the ground but because the military mission quickly changed into one of post-war reconstruction, stabilization and nation building. The Pentagon can ditch the two wars concept all it wants, but its the civilian leadership that will ultimately call the shots and get the wars they - not the military - want.