06/29/15 – Mark Perry – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, the Scott Horton Show.
On the line, I got Mark Perry.
He's the author of Four Stars, the inside story of the 40 year battle between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and America's civilian leaders.
And he's written this hilarious satire for politico.com.
It's called The Pentagon's Fight Over Fighting China.
Outrageous piece of fiction that you got here.
Mark, welcome back to the show.
How are you?
Hello, Scott.
Good to be here as always.
No, I was laughing all the way through this thing.
And I know that you were serious, but it's the subject matter that's just completely ridiculous.
I was laughing with Joseph Heller the whole time I was reading this thing.
The fight between the army on one side and the Navy and the Air Force on the other.
I guess the Marines are stuck with the Navy.
They don't get too much play in the piece, but maybe you can elaborate on that.
But anyway, they've had a giant fight over the future of war in which direction the Pentagon should go here, as you write about.
And you start the story after the first Gulf War in 1991.
Why is that?
Well, because it was such a success, I think.
And you're right, it reads somewhat as a comedy, but for people who work in the Pentagon and people in the armed services, this is deadly serious stuff.
After the first Gulf War, which was an amazing American victory, military officers began to ask themselves what would have happened if our Air Force and Navy had been challenged, if Saddam Hussein—remember the first Gulf War in 1991—if Saddam Hussein had had an Air Force, if he'd had a Navy, if he'd been able to stop us before we attacked them, what would we have done?
What would our success have looked like, and would it have been a victory?
And the military at the time was thinking about a future conflict with China.
And they began to plan out a conflict in which we did not have control of the seas, we did not have control of the skies, and they came up with a doctrine called Air-Sea Battle, and began to promote it very heavily.
It called for the development of new weapons to counter those who would deny us access to airspace or to the sea.
And beginning then in 1991 until just recently, this was a full-on battle between the Army and the Marine Corps on the one side and the Air Force and the Navy on the other.
Alright, and now, so this is all framed in the context of China, and you say that sometimes they pretend that it's not, that, well, they're just up against, you know, a fictional bumble stand or, you know, somebody who might ever try to stop us.
But it seems kind of funny, and it goes, I guess, I believe, unmentioned in your article here that all of us know, including everyone who's the subject of this piece, that the Chinese have H-bombs, and not too many of them, but enough to, it should be enough to deter the American government from ever, you know, thinking about anything but finding a diplomatic way to get along with them for the rest of the history of mankind, which ought to be a long time rather than a short one, right?
You would think, and you're absolutely right, they have hydrogen weapons, nuclear weapons, and intercontinental ballistic missiles, but the military believes that should there be a confrontation, it would begin conventionally, it'd probably begin at sea or in the air, and that we have to prepare for it.
I must say, you know, the military can't seem to make up its mind whether we should plan for future conflicts or continue our partnership, so we're doing both with China.
On the one hand, we're working hard with them to coordinate and to reach understandings on all kinds of fronts, but at the same time, the Pentagon is preparing for a future confrontation with China.
And this also seems to be, you talk about Bill Clinton in 1996, during the confrontation when he sent, was it the 7th Fleet, to the Taiwan Straits there, that, I mean, obviously this is wrapped up in the pseudo-independence of Taiwan and America's kind of half-pledged to help keep it independent.
But it's also in the context of, it doesn't sound like anywhere in the article you're talking about anyone imagining China trying to become a global power and really create a global navy and try to replace the United States as the global hegemon.
We're talking about, they're building up the best Coast Guard they can as a defensive, I think you call it, it's a strategy of denial, right?
Not of assault, but just trying to make the cost so high for the Americans that they won't want to attack.
Well, that's right.
In 1996, China conducted a series of naval exercises near Taiwan, which seemed to us to be provocative, seemed to the Clinton administration to be provocative.
So we deployed two aircraft carriers to challenge them.
And they really couldn't respond.
They have one aircraft carrier built since then.
But what they've done is they've purchased and developed a barrage of anti-ship missiles, submarines, sea mines, all designed to keep us from gaining access to the waters near Taiwan and to the waters near China.
So air-sea battle, this new doctrine adopted by the Navy and the Air Force and now by the entire military, is a response to that.
It's a way of attempting to defend our ships and aircraft from the new, highly developed barrage of weapons that the Chinese have purchased and invented.
And this doctrine is put out there in order to focus the military's attention on these new conflicts that will happen in the waterways and the airways around the world, but especially in regards to China.
Well, what is the successful defense against a barrage of missiles, ballistic and sea-skimming and otherwise?
Just more and more F-35s that barely even work anyway?
More and more F-35s, anti-missile missiles, new sensors, intelligence and reconnaissance aircraft, cyber capabilities, I mean, you know, the optimal weapon to use against an anti-access or area-denial weapon is to press a button and to shut down the computer network that operates the weapons so that they can't even fire.
It sounds futuristic, but it isn't.
It's being developed now.
It's at the heart of this new air-sea battle doctrine is the development of cyber weaponry that will make it impossible for any kind of adversary to even launch missiles against any of our ships or aircraft.
Well, I mean, that seems worthwhile in and of itself, I guess, if they're actually capable of that.
But I guess, you know, it seems like the Americans would be just as much or possibly more vulnerable to those kinds of things since, you know, the Chinese, everything they're doing is new, basically, because they're coming from having such a small military before that America has got a lot more legacy systems there that seem probably a lot easier to hack, right?
Well, that's exactly right.
But I, you know, I say in the article, and I would say to you now, this is what was described to me by one Pentagon official as a self-licking ice cream cone.
The self-licking ice cream cone is a phrase used in the Pentagon to describe the development of weapons that cause potential adversaries to develop weapons to counter them, which causes us to develop weapons to counter those in an escalating ladder of increased expenses, increased budget, increased defense materials that could bankrupt us.
Yeah.
Increased danger for everybody else.
Well, you're right.
You know, optimally, there's nothing wrong with developing the weapons that we have in order to protect our ships and aircraft.
But it would cost us a lot less if we would continue the open partnership with the Chinese and try to reach an accommodation with them, rather than climbing an escalating budget ladder that is, at least theoretically, infinite and cost us billions and billions and billions of dollars over the next 20 or 30 years.
You know, it's interesting.
It doesn't seem like, as far as I know, that there's much of a war among corporate powers over those who like getting along with and trading with China versus those who have a very specific vested interest, like General Dynamics or Lockheed or Raytheon or the people who are directly selling technology to the military for use, possible use against them one day.
But it seems like all the rest of big business in America, they want to get along with China.
They have to.
Yes.
And in fact, we just passed through the Congress a trade pact that has enormous potential for increasing trade with China and with Asia in general.
And it seems to me, you're absolutely right, this is the solution, that closer economic ties certainly trump any kind of confrontation that we might have, and it seems to me, is the solution to heading off confrontations.
All right.
Now, we're a little bit overtime into the break, and I don't want to cheat the live audience too much.
So hold it right there, Mark, and we'll be right back.
All right.
Thank you.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Mark Perry, writing this time for Politico Magazine.
I don't know who's the editor over there, but they do some good journalism in Politico Magazine.
You really ought to check it out.
This one is called The Pentagon's Fight Over Fighting China.
We haven't even gotten to the Desert Ox, Ray Odierno, and the Army's say and fight in all this yet.
We were stuck talking about the narrow interest, not the national interest, but the narrow interest of the military and their contractors as compared to the other 300 million of us.
But anyway, oh, and the sense, of course, that it makes for America to be partners with China in every way that we possibly can for the common interests of all of humankind and that kind of thing.
These Navy and Air Force guys, they decide, you talk another turning point was the Afghan war.
They're just thrilled.
They're amazed with themselves, so proud of themselves, Mark, it sounds like, that the Navy was able to coordinate with the Air Force to use their tankers to refuel.
This is a miracle.
They're patting themselves on the back.
This is the greatest thing.
This just proves how joint they are and how jointly they can work together in all this.
And meanwhile, it sounds like the Army feels like the odd man out.
Their infantry hasn't done too well in the last few wars, and nobody really envisions a land war in China, I don't think, except, I don't know, maybe Bill Kristol or something.
So the Army's the odd man out, and again, never mind the national interest, they're interested in themselves.
So they've been fighting like hell over this for the last many years, it sounds like, huh?
It makes your head spin, Scott, you're exactly right.
The Air Force and the Navy are the ones who shaped this new air-sea-battle doctrine, as it's called, and to the Army, that looked like they were getting cut out.
And it also looked like, for them, to the Army, it looked like the Air Force and the Navy were engaging in a budget grab.
One estimate says that this new doctrine would cost $524 billion over the next 10 years, at the same time that the Army budget is going down.
This was a real frightening prospect for the Army.
So they moved quickly to try to kill the doctrine, the adoption of these new tactics.
They criticized it as provocative to China, which I think it is.
They criticized it as a windfall for the Air Force and Navy, and this got to be a real parochial, all-hands-on-deck fight between the services inside the Pentagon over what our tax dollars should buy and when and how much should be bought.
And frankly, the Army was outflanked on this one, and ended up fighting a rearguard action which did not succeed, and the result is that Air-Sea-Battle doctrine, an Air Force and a Navy doctrine that focuses on ships and aircraft in fighting future wars, is now established as our defense policy, and the Army is going to have to become lighter and more mobile and figure out how to operate in Asia without getting involved in a land war in China.
So this was a hell of a fight, and frankly, I don't think it's over yet.
Now, what role did the fight between the advocates of the F-22 and the F-35 have over this?
Because it seems like Gates sided against the F-22, and if I remember the speech right, when he was shutting it down, he basically said that, look, we're not going to fight China in an air war, which is what the F-22 is designed to do, but the F-35, maybe it doesn't work, but someday if we use magic somehow and make it work, then it's at least designed in theory to drop bombs on the ground.
So in theory, we would be able to use it in our wars, which you might have noticed are against peasants in tiny third world countries that we occupy who can't possibly shoot back at us, not sophisticated first world countries like China who have modern fighter jets for our top gun guys to dogfight with.
And so the F-22, it costs too much, but it's obsolete and it's got to go.
He sided with the F-35, but then you say in here that, you know, he actually, you know, bought into the whole air sea thing.
So is it the Navy and the Air Force don't mind the switch to the F-35 that much, or is that much to do with it?
Well, I, you know, the saying among defense contractors and weapons developers, when you say that the F-35 doesn't work, is they shrug their shoulders and they say, well, it works so far and the parts that don't work, if we throw enough money at it, we'll get it to work.
Now, the problem with that, of course, is that the cost becomes enormous with cost overruns all the time, but essentially they're right.
And US engineering, US engineers are phenomenal, the best in the world.
Our technical people are the best in the world, and it is true.
If you throw enough money at a weapons system, you can get it to work.
The question is, can we afford to do that?
And we have sequestration now, which means that the defense budget is being slowly but surely pared back.
And whether or not you agree with air sea battle, we simply might not be able to afford it.
So we're going to have to trim our sails.
We're going to have to adopt those weapons systems that we can afford and do the best we can with what we have.
But we, you know, the result of Afghanistan and Iraq, outside of Afghanistan and Iraq, which has been tragic and stupid, is the result of Afghanistan and Iraq is that we simply don't have the budgets that air sea battle demand that we have in order to do the job that we can.
And maybe that's all for the good.
Maybe if we pare back our defense budget, we'll also trim our outlook and we'll engage with partnerships that we should be engaging with to begin with.
So in other words, there's no real contradiction there.
Gates was saying, look, I'm all for the air sea battle doctrine and whatever, but you're not going to use the F-35s or the 22s.
We're axing the 22s because at least in theory, we could use the F-35s in the Middle East too.
And so that was, but he wasn't necessarily siding with those who would stay focused on the Middle East rather than East Asia.
Is that correct?
I think that Gates came in, took one look at Iraq and Afghanistan and only took one look and decided that we had to get out of there and that it would, it was stupid for us to be in there in the first place.
And remember, Gates repeated Douglas MacArthur's principle, which was never get involved in the land war in Asia.
Now what's important about the statement is that it doesn't say don't get involved in an air war or a sea war with Asian countries.
It says, don't get involved in the land war in Asia.
And I think that the distinction is something that was important for him.
He was willing to build up the Navy and the Air Force, but he was unwilling and remained to his last day as Secretary of Defense, absolutely unwilling to deploy more troops to Iraq or to Afghanistan and unwilling to do anything except get us out of there, which, and I think his instincts on that were absolutely right.
Yeah, I mean, all the good journalism says he opposed the war in Libya, but Obama sided with Hillary and did it anyway.
And you say in here that when he gave that famous quote that, you know, any president who wants to do this again or anybody advising a president to put a land war, you know, put soldiers on the ground in the Middle East needs to have their head examined, that the Army guys, this is why, this is the thing I was thinking of that reminded me of Catch 22 the most, where the Army guys are so upset over this that they basically go into a panic over this.
And then it seems like, you know, like in Nick Turse's journalism, they really decided, well, fine, if we don't have much of a role, well, you say in here they invented this hybrid doctrine where they're going to be the Marines now, but mostly it seems like they want to pivot to Africa and there's, you know, 50 something countries they can invade and train up armies to fight each other and take sides in and this kind of thing unending, right?
Well, they have 570,000 troops three years ago to pivot with, and now they have 450,000 or 420,000 to pivot with.
It's easy for them to talk about how they need to pivot to here or there or somewhere else, but you can't do it without an army.
And we're at the lowest levels, deployment levels that we've had now in the last two decades.
So, you know, they can talk about pivoting to Africa all they want, but there's not much to pivot with.
That's not true for the Air Force and the Navy.
We run, we keep the sea lanes open.
The U.S., there's just no competition for the U.S. Navy and there's no competition for the U.S. Air Force.
We could defeat the Egyptian Air Force before breakfast and we could defeat the Chinese Air Force in about three days.
So this isn't really a controversy unless you're in the army and you're looking at troop levels and you're looking at parts of the budget pie.
That's what they're really worried about is the cutback to their money that they're getting from the Pentagon for their programs.
And to do that, they have to argue that there might be real problems in Africa or there are other problems in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the American people, and certainly this was true for Bob Gates, they just don't buy it.
Yeah, well, they shouldn't.
All right.
Well, thanks very much for your time.
It's a fascinating portrayal of life inside the officer corps up there in the Pentagon and the incentive structures that they work under and all the rest of it.
It's really something to behold.
So thanks very much for writing it and coming on the show.
Talk about Mark.
Always my pleasure, Scott.
Thank you.
Great.
Appreciate it.
All right.
That's Mark Perry.
He lives in Arlington and writes for all different places, foreign policy.
Al Jazeera.
Here he is at Politico magazine, the Pentagon's fight over fighting China.
And his book is Four Stars, the inside story of the 40 year battle between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and America's civilian leaders.
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