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The "end" of two-war strategy |
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15:32, June 23, 2009 |
U.S. army needs to enhance its adaptability to cope with threats it will face in future regional conflicts and, in the meantime the theory of winning two wars simultaneously is no longer applicable, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates told reporters on June 18.
His predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, once dedicated himself to a defense shift in an effort to cope with the threat of strategic attack. Rumsfeld shifted from a threat-based strategy to a capability-based strategy, and insisted on abandoning the so-called "two major war" strategy.
The former defense secretary, nevertheless, excessively underscoreed the high technical priority and a drastic increase for military spending. So, the United States then did not truly move away from the two-war strategy.
Today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has reiterated that the two-war strategy would be skipped over or abandoned in the future four-year defense assessment report, which has based its thinking in part on continuing Rumsfeld's defense shift concept and in part on proceeding to amend it.
The gist or main idea of the two-war strategy is to redefine what kind of military threat the U.S. should set store by in the future. For this cause, Pentagon officials have argued or debated endlessly over recent years about which type of threat the U.S. will be subjected to in the years ahead.
One voice is firmly entrenched or remains mired in the cold war mentality of the post war, with an eye on conventional challenges some major powers has posed for the United States. And another voice, however, is featured in an unconventional warfare in the foreseeable future after the U.S. has experienced the Somali War, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the war on terrorism in a broad sense in the post-cold war era.
In view of inconsistency between its current disposition of forces and weaponry and the practical needs, what the American army would respond to in the foreseeable future is not military challenges from major big powers but the irregular or nonconventional state of war.
At present, the former voice occupies the mainstream, and people in this mainstream would take future threats from big power into view while fighting the war on terrorism. After he succeeded as the defense minister, Robert Gates has maintained that the non-conventional military threat is what the U.S. army should tackle in the years ahead instead of military threats from big powers. Hence, he would like to go all our for reforms.
In fact, he took drastic measures in a full 2010 spending plan to Congress in April. For example, he would like to drop the F-22 and stop buying them after 187; to propose speeding up the development and procurement of the F-35 fighter jets, which are cheap and all functional, and make them one of the most numerous jet fighters, to halt the future combat systems, which tries to place the 200 billion-dollar-project in the broader contest of Army building, to shrink the DDG-1000 destroyer program, recommend an increase of 143.2 million dollars in advance procurement for DDG-51, so as to achieve the maximum savings for the taxpayers and best quality for commercial software packages.
Defense Secretary Gates also called for cutting 1.4 billion dollars for missile defense weaponry in 2010 budget, canceling plans for more C-17 transport planes and cutting elements of the missile defense program.
Defense contractors have planned for adjustment to defense cuts. In adjusting his military plan, Robert Gates seeks to counter non-conventional military threats, and such an adjustment embodies his practical style of work and it is based on combat experiences in the past two wars on terrorism.
In addition, the ongoing financial crisis the U.S is currently facing has prompted Pentagon to buy cheaper but very useful arms instead of the most sophisticated weapons. Nevertheless, Gates has met with challenges in the course of retooling varied arms and services of the armed forces. Consequently, people still need more careful observation to see whether the defense secretary will truly give up the two-war strategy.
By People's Daily Online, and contributed by Fan Jishe, an associated researcher at the Institute of American Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrb/html/2009-06/23/content_280548.htm
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