The Half War

Planning U.s. Rapid Deployment Forces To Meet A Limited Contingency 19601983

Robert P Haffa Jr

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000302110
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book offers a strategic, organizational, and logistical analysis in a historical context of the planning of conventional forces to meet a limited contingency. The central question is: Why, from 1960 to 1982, did the U.S. fail to construct a coherent limited contingency force? Analysis of a series of comparative case studies reveals that the strategic concept to the "half war," or limited contingency, was never articulated adequately enough to support specific force planning. Organizations designed to oversee and command limited contingency forces, fragmented by interservice rivalries and the absence of joint doctrine, lacked multiservice composition and a unified command structure. A search for economy in limited contingency forces seemed justified by illusions about their capabilities. Low budgetary priority and Congressional perceptions that enhanced U.S. rapid deployment capabilities would encourage U.S. global intervention contributed to the lack of logistical and mobility systems dedicated to them. The wider intent of this study is to shed light on the general purpose force planning process and to suggest policy guidance as the United States once again embarks on a major conventional force planning initiative. Rather than being trapped by the past, new efforts to meet vital U.S. military interests below the nuclear threshold must identify "half war" planning contingencies, structure unified commands capable of directing tailored conventional forces in specific theaters, and provide adequate strategic mobility systems.

1
Introduction

Statement of the Problem

The Duke of Wellington once remarked that "a great nation cannot fight in a small war." That aphorism could well be applied to the United States since its emergence as a great power after World War II. Certainly, the United States encountered serious political and military difficulties in attempting to constrain its involvement in the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam.¹ This is not to suggest, however, that the United States failed to accomplish force planning for a war limited in terms of scope, tactics, region and objectives. The need for general purpose forces to implement the policy of containment had been foreseen before Korea, and, by 1955, it was accepted that the principal components of U.S. defense policy included "American forces and allied forces strong enough to deter or to suppress small-scale aggressions of disorders inimical to American interests in the 'grey areas' of the world."² By 1979, after Vietnam but before the perceived need to plan general purpose forces to meet a limited contingency in Southwest Asia,³ American policymakers had concluded that the following objectives should guide force planning:⁴

• - the U.S. should be able to protect critical alliance interests that are endangered by a non-nuclear attack on the periphery by meeting such an attack at its own level;
• - the U.S. response should be rapid enough to frustrate a quick takeover;
• - the U.S. should have this capability steadily without sacrificing its ability to fight or deter a large war happening at the same time or sequentially;
• - the U.S. should have a reliable capability that will meet a high level of confidence.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in November 1979, coupled with the fall of the Shah of Iran only a few months earlier, set in motion a series of U.S. foreign and defense policy initiatives to support these declared objectives and to increase U.S. capabilities to conduct limited military operations against a major adversary in the "third world."

As the events in Afghanistan and Iran unfolded and as U.S. military responses and options were reevaluated, it became clear that U.S. conventional forces were not adequately designed, organized or supported to counter a modern army on a third world battlefield. This study focuses on past and present U.S. efforts to develop a defense strategy, construct an organization and procure deployment systems in order to create a coherent limited contingency force capable of meeting threats to American and allied interests in a less than major conflict.⁵

Owing to a variety of limiting factors to be developed within this study, forces allocated to cope with a limited contingency have historically lacked a coherent strategy, a capable organization and the strategic mobility required to accomplish the assigned mission. The Iranian revolution and the Afghanistan invasion, coupled with Western dependence on Persian Gulf oil, suggest that the neglect of U.S. forces to meet a lesser contingency is no longer benign. The possibility of U.S. armed forces facing a Soviet or proxy force on a third world battlefield in a conflict limited in scope, but conceivably linked to a major contingency in Europe argues for a strategy, force, organization and support dedicated to such a lesser contingency, alone.⁶ Moreover, although these recent events in Southwest Asia have once again triggered a concern for the adequacy of force planning for a limited contingency, there is an attendant danger of focusing concern solely on that region. Historical trends developed in this study, when overlayed with a projection of the threat, imply the need to plan for the simultaneous occurrence of other lesser contingencies as well.

Thesis and Propositions

The principal thesis here is that previous strategic assumptions regarding the planning of forces to fight a lesser contingency no longer remain valid. In the past, because a limited war was, by definition, of less importance than a major military effort and might not occur simultaneously with a major contingency, it was tempting for the force planner to think that the military capability to handle one or two greater contingencies implied the ability to deal with a lesser one. This notion that the limited contingency is simply a "lesser included case" of the larger conflicts now appears to have outlived its usefulness. The fundamental conceptual premise of this study is that the United States must now consider the lesser contingency--or a set of lesser conflicts--as excluded cases. The requirement for a credible military force to support U.S. foreign policy objectives in areas of vital interest, apart from those regions associated with the major contingency, demands the capabilities of an independent force.

Such a thesis relies on a number of propositions, to be developed and supported within this study:

• - the lesser contingency, although it has varied in size, scope, geographical region and adversary, has been an element contained within the U.S. strategic concept for the last two decades;
• - despite that recognition, preparation has proved inadequate. Forces to meet a limited contingency were never adequately planned for, funded, constructed or supported;
• - the strategy that depended on the flexibility of a central strategic reserve was unrealistic in terms of available resources and implementation;
• - the organizations structured in support of that strategy confronted problems of unified command and faced interservice conflict over assigned missions. Forces assigned to these organizations were not dedicated to the command and were based upon a false assumption of ground unit versatility;
• - the mobility systems in support of a strategy of rapid deployment were not procured in numbers adequate to support that effort simultaneously with a major contingency.

These propositions suggest that force planning based on similar strategic concepts will not be adequate to meet successfully a simultaneous sophisticated attack in a remote, yet vital area. Given the Soviet threat, the definition of vital U.S. interests in Western Europe, Southwest Asia, Northeast Asia and the Caribbean basin as well as the requirements for U.S. military capability in these regions, a credible limited contingency force requires a strategy that disaggregates these contingencies, encourages organizational autonomy for command structures assigned regional responsibilities and supports the acquisition of rapid mobility systems to deploy forces to these separate regions against a range of potential adversaries.

In examining these propositions, this book develops a number of themes that run throughout the study. First, from a strategic perspective, there is the continuing gap that exists between policy guidance and force planning. Military men have consistently complained of the lack of precise strategic guidance that prohibits effective force planning. This has resulted in a continuing, albeit unsuccessful, effort to secure an agreed-upon statement of national policy which could lend itself to a well-defined force posture.

Secondly, the theme of flexible organizations and versatile ground forces will be developed. The lack of specific strategic objectives, when coupled with omnipresent budgetary constraints, has led to a philosophy of force versatility which has pervaded force planning for a limited contingency force. Rather than plan a limited contingency force specifically to meet a certain threat in a specified region, the pattern over the last twenty-three years has been to structure a force capable of rapid deployment to and operation in any contingency. This presumption of the capability of such a force to "go anywhere and do anything" will be questioned throughout the study, particularly with regard to the concept's application in a region of acknowledged vital interest and potential escalatory conflict.

Third, there is the strategy-force mismatch that continues to plague the force planner. Budgetary constraints necessarily result in a gap between those forces required to support the declared strategy and those that can actually be procured. These realities of the weapons acquisition cycle have had particular impact on the procurement of strategic mobility systems planned in support of a rapid deployment capability. In many cases, as will be evidenced below, systems could be allocated to a lesser contingency operation only if they were originally supported based on their contribution to missions of greater consequence.

Definitions

The limited contingency--It is important to understand first what is meant by the limited contingency, a concept that has undergone considerable change both in location and threat since 1960. Initially, the limited contingency was seen as a conflict that would need significantly fewer forces than would be required to combat a major Communist power, that is, the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China. The limited contingency was first referred to as a "brushfire war,"⁷ implying a police action against a lesser state in the third world. The principal scenario envisioned the application of a small U.S. force, perhaps in a counterinsurgent rather than a conventional role, to control or terminate quickly an uprising against a friendly government. Thus, the "brushfire" version of the limited contingency involved low-intensity warfare, just above the use of "force without war" along the spectrum of violence⁸ and well below the commonly envisioned scenario of the major contingency--a NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict in central Europe. More recently, the limited contingency has come to connote the possibility of a limited conventional war, requiring the dedication of a significant force and existing in the mid-range between the "brushfire" and major contingency.

The "half war"--A spinoff from the term "limited contingency" was the term "half war."⁹ Although this phrase was apparently not used publicly until 196S (the more common term within the Kennedy/Johnson administrations was "two-plus" contingency planning), it is a term that has recently enjoyed some popularity, particularly when tied to formulations of the "2-1/2 war" or "1-1/2 war" strategic concepts. As both an analytical concept and as a guide to force planning, the "half war" has proved faulty, for it suggested both the singularity and the separateness of a limited war. The "half war" strategic concept implied that there might be only one lesser contingency or that others would not occur simultaneously with it or with a major conflict. Therefore, the "half war" was frequently portrayed as an inclusive war, one which could be met with forces and systems sized, organized and supported to meet a major contingency.

This study draws a major definitional difference between the "half war" as envisioned and planned for during the majority of the period under examination and the "limited contingency" now facing U.S. defense planners. As originally conceived, the "half war":

• - required the application of minimal military force against a less than sophisticated enemy;
• - required the rapid deployment of a central force, primarily ground units, to unknown and distant areas, with likely assistance from the nation being supported;
• - offered prospects for a quick settlement, with little potential for escalation or linkage to a major contingency;
• - involved areas of less than vital interest.

In contrast, the "limited contingency" of today;

• - requires the application of a significant force against a sophisticated enemy--Soviet, proxy or, at least, Soviet armed and trained;
• - requires the rapid deployment of a multi-service force, to include a wide range of combat capabilities, and with uncertain allied support;
• - offers unclear prospects for a quick settlement, with a potential for escalation to other limited contingencies or to a major contingency;
• - involves areas of vital interest to the United States.

Implications for force planning for the "half war" included:

• - the need for conventional forces, primarily versatile ground units, capable of operating in a wide variety of climates, topographical conditions and against a range of possible, but primitive adversaries;
• - a willingness to dedicate forces committed to other major contingencies under the assumption that the "half war" was unrelated to other international events or that the hostilities could be quickly terminated or put on "hold" in order to meet contingencies of greater priority.

Implications for force planning for a "limit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• About the Book and the Author
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Maps
• Acknowledgments
• 1. INTRODUCTION
• 2. FORCE PLANNING FOR A LIMITED CONTINGENCY: CONSTANCY AND CHANGE IN THE U.S. STRATEGIC CONCEPT, 1960 - 1980
• 3. ORGANIZING FOR THE LIMITED CONTINGENCY: INSTITUTIONALIZING STRATEGIES OF RAPID DEPLOYMENT, 1960 - 1980
• 4. SUPPORTING THE LIMITED CONTINGENCY: MOBILITY SYSTEMS FOR RAPID DEPLOYMENT, 1960 - 1980
• 5. FORCE PLANNING FOR THE HALF WAR: THE RDJTF AS A LIMITED CONTINGENCY FORCE
• 6. PLANNING FOR RAPIDLY DEPLOYABLE FORCES IN THE 1980s
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX