Targeting Victory in a Time of Change

ecruiting commercials are fascinating windows into the priorities of the services and their messages to future potential recruits. The United States Marine Corps does this better than other branches. “The Few, the Proud, the Marines” is likely one of the most memorable taglines of any military recruitment campaign. Recently, the Marines released a strikingly advanced recruitment pitch entitled “Shifting Threats”. In the video, Marines are seen operating in multiple environments, leveraging advanced technologies such as drones and long-range, precision strike capabilities alongside the traditional Marine rifleman to counter an unidentified adversary. 

This new Marine Corps recruiting video fittingly mirrors the Corps’ changing view of the world and how it is responding as an institution. Those plans were captured in the Corps’ “Force Design 2030”. Writing about the design, General David H. Berger, the Commandant of the Marine Corps stated the Corps’ position succinctly in an essay for the Marine Corps Gazette: 

"The United States Marine Corps I lead in 2020 finds itself, like the rest of the U.S. defense establishment, at a crossroads. The passing of our Nation’s “unipolar moment” and the emergence of revisionist great power competitors in China and Russia, coinciding with a sea change in the character of warfare driven by social and technological change, demands that we move rapidly to adapt to the circumstances of a new era."

Force Design 2030 outlined a significant shift in the way the Corps was designed, structured, and how it intended to fight in the future. It also prompted considerable backlash from former Marines and politicians who felt this shift was contrary to the Marines’ identity and purpose. The debate arising from this backlash misses the point. The Commandant was trying to do what Marines do: improvise and adapt to overcome unforeseen challenges which arose at a time of profound geopolitical and technological change. How militaries or services like the Marines adapt to these changes dictates the success or failure of nations, and is the central thesis of Andrew Krepinevich Jr.’s new book “The Origins of Victory”.

Andrew Krepinevich Jr. is one of America’s leading defense thinkers, having been involved in some of the most consequential debates about the modernization of America’s armed forces, and his expertise on display in this sharply argued and thought-provoking book. 

In “The Origins of Victory” Krepinevich restricts his focus to conventional warfighting (whilst touching on nuclear confrontation), avoiding exploring less conventional methods. It is a sensible limitation for the purposes of the book, in which Krepinevich refocuses on the Pentagon’s core mission–plan to fight and win wars– as opposed to what it has increasingly done since the end of the Cold War: serve as a one-stop-shop for all of America’s policy challenges. 

Krepinevich opens by arguing that the precision warfare revolution—the high-tech marriage of sensors with highly-accurate weapons systems—has reached its maturity, with these capabilities having sufficiently diffused to America’s adversaries. China and Russia (arguably to a lesser degree) witnessed the strength of America’s capabilities in Operation Desert Storm (1991) and other campaigns, and sought to both develop similar offensive capabilities and counter measures to the U.S. military’s strengths. Therefore, the costs advanced inter-state war have increased at a time when the American military’s overmatch has effectively ended. 

Krepinevich then transitions to a brief overview of the most impactful technologies. He focuses on how artificial intelligence (covered in depth by Dr. Paul Scharre in his book “Four Battlegrounds”), quantum computing, synthetic biology, and hypersonics (among other technologies) could alter defense planning and military strategy. It is an adequate overview, giving readers just enough to understand the broad-brush strokes of technology’s impact. Krepinevich could have added more, particularly in his far too short chapter on how these technologies will alter the calculus of deterrence. 

The closing third, and by far the strongest, is Krepinevich’s historical analysis of how previous militaries have adapted to significant changes in technology and the geostrategic environments in which they operated from the Royal Navy in the 19^th century, the German army in the interwar period, the United States’ adoption of the aircraft carrier in the 20^th century, and the emergence of America’s precision-warfare complex from Vietnam through to Desert Storm in Iraq. 

Krepinevich is generally spot on in the broad strokes of his analysis. He does succumb to the occasional cliché such as intimating that the tank is no longer of value on the battlefield—the death of the tank was greatly exaggerated in recent debates over Ukraine. He also could have discussed more about the consequences of the War on Terrorism on America’s defense planning, with which are still coming to grips in light of Ukraine and as Taiwan looms on the horizon. His thesis remains, nonetheless, sound. 

There is a risk, though, that policymakers reading this book will draw the wrong lessons. It is a weakness not in Krepinevich’s writing, but in American defense policy itself—technological fetishism. There is an overwhelming fixation on the hardware of warfighting—the guns, bombs, jets, and tanks—to the exclusion of the software, institutions, policies, leadership, and politics that govern defense policymaking. The hardware is obviously easier, of course. A hypersonic missile is tangible, a physical thing that can be engineered, tested, and fielded. Institutional reform, by contrast, is much harder to implement let alone sustain over a long period of time. 

That software is the foundation for successful innovation and adaptation in military and defense policy, a point well-made by Lt. Gen. David Barno and Dr. Nora Bensahel in their book “Adaptation Under Fire.” The four case studies Krepinevich uses to illustrate his thesis all have technological elements, but they are all the least important aspects of the story. The transition from the age of sail to the age of coal and oil, and the arrival of torpedoes and submarines most certainly drove changes in the Royal Navy’s planning, but it was Admiral of the Fleet Sir Jackie Fisher and his institutional reforms that ensured success for London. 

One of the striking takeaways from the case studies, and one that reflects the criticality of the software aspect of military reform, is the centrality of defined concepts. “Success in disruptive military innovation is highly dependent on the challenge the military sets for itself. What is it trying to accomplish?” He continues, “identifying the right challenge against which to focus a military’s efforts at disruptive innovation is critical. The more accurately and precisely you can define it, the greater the chances that you will be able to address it successfully.” The Pentagon and the White House are superb at crafting lofty sounding but ultimately hollow statements of intent, but they are woefully incapable of crafting a defined operational concept, against which the military can plan. 

Here, it is worth reading Krepinevich’s book in parallel with Elbridge Colby’s “The Strategy of Denial”. While some disagree with Colby’s analysis and conclusions, it is an articulation of a clear operational concept against which military planners can work and the services can acquire. For Colby, it is the denial of China’s hegemonic ambitions and designs against Taiwan, in the first instance, but planning for escalation and the eventual outbreak of hostilities in the second. When read together, readers will see how the necessity of innovation and adaptation are nested within a broader defense framework. 

While Krepinevich does not dive deeply into the present state of America’s defense institutions and policy making, after reading “The Origins of Victory” one would be hard pressed to see him grading the Pentagon anything above a “D” now. It is worth quoting Krepinevich at length:

“Until the U.S. military devises a concept for how it is going to fight, it also risks making poor investment choices, a luxury it can ill afford when confronted with two great military-power rivals in a period of rapidly growing domestic debt. Absent an operational concept that takes into account the major changes that are occurring in war’s character, the Pentagon risks operating off ‘program momentum’: put simply, continuing to field capabilities that are moving through the production pipeline.” 

While there are pockets of forward-leaning innovation and adaptation, they are largely in isolation and disconnected from the larger ship of state. Turning the battleship that is the Department of Defense is anything but a smooth process. Adjusting the course of any large bureaucracy would be a challenge, but one with as many political and industrial interests and with as large a budget as it has, it seems an impossible task. Short of shifting the entirety of the bureaucracy, it is also about creating an adaptable and responsive bureaucracy, and even that might be a bridge too far. Disruptive innovation comes from unexpected areas and often creates markets that previously never existed. Expecting the Department of Defense to anticipate the creation of these markets is asking too much but preparing it to respond swiftly may be more attainable. 

It is ironic, then, that the organization that is embodying the changes, innovation, and adaptation that Krepinevich outlines as determinant—the U.S. Marine Corps—received the most vociferous and aggressive criticism for doing precisely what was necessary. While the Corps has an advantage of being the smallest service, that its efforts to innovate and adapt to the changing global and technological circumstances received such a backlash does not speak well of the ability of the wider military to adjust and respond to these changes. 

Readers would also do well to keep in mind the fact that war is a very human enterprise, the most violent of all human endeavors. The scenes coming out of Ukraine bear witness to this truth. At the end of the day, and for the foreseeable future, the contest of wills between states will come down to men and women in uniform. It is incumbent upon political leaders and military commanders to provide America’s servicemembers with the best equipment and technology possible should a war occur, but to act with the wisdom and prudence to seek to avoid war unless there is no other option.