THE PIVOT TOWARD “CHINA RISING”

By Maj. Gen. Jerry R. Curry (Ret'd)
CurryforAmerica.com

As Chinese influence rises in the international corridors of power some would have the United States surrender its current world leadership role in Europe and pivot towards Asia. This is a repeat of the late 1980s and early 1990s, a time when the US was believed to be in serious decline, Japan appeared to be transcendent, and many believed it would rise to preeminence in the world’s economic corridor of power.

Those of us who refused to surrender to the idea of the US losing its position of dominance in the world were laughed out of conferences. Now China is rising and supposedly is going to squeeze the US out of its place at the head of the international table.  

In support of this eventuality, the Army is being redesigned to be small, nimble and capable of carrying out diverse missions. Supposedly forces armed with heavy armored vehicles like tanks are no longer that necessary nor desirable as sequestration and other peacetime budget cutting mechanisms force the Army to drastically shrink in size and to live within its budget.

This is lunacy. For the US the size, equipping and quality of its Army should never be determined by budget availability. Its size and equipping can only be determined by its worldwide strategic requirements and missions. Our military forces can’t be trained and sized by academic and military philosophers or philosophy.

We should not pivot towards Asia just because the phrase has a nice ring to it and it seems like a clever thing to do.  If the US military pivots westward, it should be because that is where national defense policy and military events demand that we be. Right now our pivot must be toward countering the inroads made by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Middle East, specifically in countries like Iran, Syria, and Turkey. Israel will be asking for help to fight a ground war on its borders, not an insurgency in Gaza.

 Some think that while the numbers, types, and complexity of Army missions worldwide increase, the size of the Army can decrease. True, smaller more flexible, more lethal units prepared to conduct a mixed range of operations from old fashioned tank battles, to cyberdefense, to meeting special operations requirements, to training and advising allied military forces, to conducting  humanitarian relief missions, to winning the hearts and minds of enemy peoples are desirable. But an unbreakable rule is that as the number and scope of Army mission’s increases, the size of the Army needed to successfully carry out these missions must increase accordingly. Successful wars can’t be fought on the cheap.

And there are personnel considerations. The current leaders of the Pentagon -- civilian and military -- are engaging in near criminal activity. They are allowing the members of our armed forces to be repetitively sent back to fight in the war in Afghanistan three, four and five or more times because that is easier than fighting the Congress, President and news media to increase the size of the Army; even though they know that somewhere around the third or fourth tour, the chances of a service member returning home in a body bag increase substantially.

The military has always been criticized for preparing its forces to fight the wrong war, or the last war now that that war is over. But it is not the military’s job to predict which wars the nation will fight. That is determined by national defense and national security policy, which is determined by the Secretaries of Defense, State and the White House.

For the foreseeable future the US will continue to be the dominant military security leader in the world. It is the military leadership’s job to train and equip these forces to be fierce, flexible and able to carry out the nation’s security roles worldwide, to react to unforeseen threats and to fight and win under all conditions.

While the phrases “A Pivot to Asia” and “China Rising” are catchy and have a nice ring to them, for now the United States is destined to play a dominant role in world security affairs. That is why today the world’s nations look to the armed forces of the US as their court of last resort. This is the role that destiny has carved out for us. No other nation can fill that role.

Our armed forces must be ready at all times to meet that role, provided the Congress and the White House aren’t successful in their current efforts to dull and destroy our military’s sharp fighting edge.