After Kosovo
A collection of essays proceeding from a 1999 Capitol Hill seminar on lessons learned from the NATO campaign in Kosovo. Authors include Richard Kaufman, Kori Schaake, Michael O'Hanlon, and James K. Galbraith.
It is available as a PDF.
Opening Statement, Charles E. Schumer
I would first like to thank Jamie Galbraith (ECAAR) and Gene Carroll (CDI) for organizing this event, as well as all of today’s panelists, participants, and observers. We have a very full day ahead, and the issues we will be debating and discussing are among the most important we, as a nation, face on the eve of the 21st Century.
Beginning at 10:30, three separate distinguished panels will present insights and engage in discussions regarding the military, political, and diplomatic lessons of Kosovo, and how these lessons should inform the current and future development of America’s foreign policy agenda, including our strategic military planning, our defense spending, and the nature of our global role. Many different views will be represented here, which is exactly what is needed if America is to develop a rational foreign policy agenda for the challenging decades ahead.
I would like to start with a few observations which will lay out the context for today’s presentations and discussions, and pose a few questions that I believe require serious deliberation as America plans for the strategic challenges of the 21st Century.
First, the context. The 20th Century began with the United States emerging from the War with Spain as a global power, and by 1945 — after playing the decisive role in ending two bloody world wars — America had assumed superpower status. But America wasn’t alone at the top. Forty-five years of Cold War with the Soviet Union dictated to a great extent the nature of America’s global role, as well as the basis of America’s strategic military doctrine.
The Cold War, though rife with dangers, can be best understood as a period in which the world was divided into easy to understand spheres of power. Indeed, we spent the better part of the last half of the 20th Century following a strategic policy relatively easily defined as containing Soviet power and influence. Though often imperfect in theory and practice, and costing trillions of dollars, America’s containment policy was the foundation, and blueprint, for our nation’s strategic planning and weapons procurement policies. This meant forming and leading the NATO alliance, and organizing America’s military to be prepared to fight World War III in the heart of Europe against Warsaw Pact armies composed of more than 100 heavy divisions.
That is the world of the past.
The 21st Century begins with the United States confronting a very different kind of world. On the one hand, America begins the new millennium as the world’s sole superpower. And the principles we value so highly, such as democratic politics and free market economics, have taken hold as — some would argue — universal principles. But alongside American supremacy, and the encouraging development of emerging democracies, has been the marked increase in bloody regional and ethnic conflicts, some of which involve nuclear powers such as Russia, Pakistan, and India. And alongside the fall of the Soviet Empire has emerged the very real threat that weapons of mass destruction will slip into the hands of unstable states, rogue states, or terrorist groups which mean to do us harm.
So while the Cold War’s end has provided the United States with an opportunity to help make the world a better place to live, new challenges have also emerged, some of which may be considered more daunting than those of the 20th Century. Clearly, the 21st Century promises to begin as a much more complicated time than the world of the last half of this century.
With that in mind, what is the United States doing to formulate new strategies and new policies to deal with the new world of the 21st Century? The answer is, unfortunately, we are not doing nearly enough. In fact, although ten years have passed since the Berlin Wall came crashing down, much of America’s military force planning is still based on a presumed European-style theater conflict using heavy divisions and large weapons systems to combat a Soviet Red Army-type enemy. Not only is this a profound waste of money, but it is contributing to America’s being less, rather than more, prepared for the future.
Why are our defense planning and our weapons procurement policies still rooted in the past? Maybe it’s because, let’s face it, those policies greatly contributed to our winning the Cold War. So, some may ask, why mess with 3 success? The answer is because the game has changed. The Cold War is over, and we have to plan for the challenges of the future, not the past.
Or maybe we are stuck on procurement policies and military planning rooted in the past because the way Congress spends on defense has not changed in decades, and there is no incentive to change: jobs in states and districts are at stake, and elected leaders take that very seriously. That means strong opposition to base closures, and just as strong opposition to rethinking Cold War-era military programs like the F-22.
But overall defense spending has declined by more than 30 percent since the end of the Cold War. Clearly, we cannot afford to keep planning to fight the Soviet Empire on the one hand, and expect to meet the strategic challenges of the 21st Century on the other. For example, as we argued over the $70 billion F-22 program, we spent less than $1 billion in 1999 on counter-proliferation programs. That is an unacceptable mismatch in funding priorities.
The fact is that weapons procured in the 1970s and 1980s will begin to wear out in the coming decades, and we will have to determine new spending priorities not just for weapons, but also for the structure of our entire military establishment.
But in order to figure out the best way to structure the military budget, we must first determine our global strategy: Our procurement decisions must follow our grand strategy, not the other way around. That is why we are here today: to discuss what our strategic priorities are, or should be, and how to best meet them.
We are using Kosovo as our test case today because the Kosovo conflict represents a great example of the changes that have occurred in the world, and the types of strategic challenges and tough decisions that lie ahead.
Many people now consider Kosovo a victory for America, a victory for NATO, a victory for air power, and a victory for the principle of humanitarian intervention. But is Kosovo really indicative of the future of America’s global role? And should Kosovo-style diplomacy, and Kosovo-style military strategy now come to dominate American strategic thinking and military budgets?
It is my concern that the Kosovo victory will lull us into a false belief that America can solve all the world’s problems by bombing from 15,000 feet. The world of the 21st Century will rarely be so accommodating.
In fact, most military experts agree that the biggest threats to global peace and security in the coming decades will be from escalating regional conflicts, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. We must devise new military strategies that adapt to these new realities. That means restructuring our military — as Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki stated recently — to become lighter, more flexible and agile. The new focus needs to be on quick deployment, light armor, and greater pre-positioning of heavy weapons.
We also need to invest in sustaining our technological edge. We can afford to maintain a leaner fighting force as long as we maintain technological military superiority over current and future competitors.
These lessons should inform the current and future development of America’s foreign policy agenda, including our strategic military planning, our defense spending, and the nature of our global role..