A New Name for Winning: Losing

BY: By Dov S. Zakheim
The New York Times, June 19, 1993

During the mid-1970’s, Navy planners studied the prospect of fighting the Soviet Union in the
Atlantic and Pacific theaters with a fleet they expected to be half the size of the one that operated
during the Vietnam War. Making the best of a bad situation, they devised the “swing strategy.” It
called for a rapid and successful operation in the Pacific and redeployment of part of the Pacific
Fleet to save the day for embattled Atlantic units.

Few naval officers — and even fewer naval analysts — took the idea seriously. There were too
many unknowns. Would the Soviet Union lose quickly enough in the Pacific? What would be the
level of American losses? How would the war unfold in the Atlantic and in Europe? Would the
Pacific forces transit safely to the Atlantic? Would they arrive in time or would the war on land
have already been decided? No one could answer these questions, though Pentagon operations
analysts tried mightily to do so.

The Clinton Administration wants the swing strategy to rise from its analytical ashes,
incorporating not merely the Navy but all our conventional forces. Defense Secretary Les Aspin is
giving it a new name: win-hold-win. It should be win-hope-win.

A vastly reduced military, confronted by the simultaneous demands of two regional wars it cannot
meet, would attempt to win one while holding off the enemy in the other until reinforcements
arrived from the first. The concept is no more realistic today than 20 years ago, yet it threatens to
become the bedrock of post-cold-war strategy.

The Administration appears prepared to jettison the doctrine of overwhelming force, which
proved its mettle in operations as small as Grenada and as large as the Persian Gulf. In its place,
win-hold-win would depend upon the highly suspect operations analysis that governed strategy
during the Vietnam War era and was discredited by the Carter Administration’s failed effort to
free the hostages held by Iran.

For our forces to “hold” an adversary, the analysts would have to postulate exactly the enemy’s
strength, the time required to win the first operation and the surviving forces available to reinforce
the holding operation. They had better be right; if not, the hostage-rescue fiasco could be repeated
on a massive scale.

Like the Navy of the 70’s, the Administration is contemplating win-hold-win to make the best of a
deteriorating defense budget situation.

When Mr. Aspin was chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, he proposed a force
capable of winning two regional wars simultaneously. President Clinton’s determination to carry
out budgetary cuts twice as large as those promised during the campaign has made that objective
unachievable. Moreover, as a result of inexorable annual increases in operations and personnel
costs, and equally relentless increases in the costs of fielding new weapons, today’s budgetary
trends suggest we may not have the resources to conduct even one operation of the magnitude of
Desert Storm.

Instead of forcing the Pentagon to fall back on a highly problematical strategy, the Administration
should accept fiscal reality. The cost of conducting two regional campaigns simultaneously is
closer to the fiscal 1994 budget of $263.4 billion than to the progressively smaller budgets
forecast through 1997.

The Administration can realize further savings, notably through cuts in heavy armored units and
the size of our submarine force. It could reduce such infrastructure elements as bases and support
personnel, and upgrade current types of aircraft rather than replace them with entirely new
models. Yet these changes would not reduce budgets significantly below the $260 billion level.
And other efficiencies, however desirable, are no more likely to be fully carried out now than
under George Bush and his post-World War II predecessors.

Who would believe we could defeat two aggressors simultaneously — even consecutively — if our
budget fell under $260 billion? Win-hold-win is no substitute for adequate defense resources. If
instituted as advertised, it would be an analyst’s dream but an officer’s nightmare. The last three
decades have shown that analysts do not win wars — the military does.

Secretary Aspin should clamp the lid back on this budget-driven Pandora’s nightmare. And he
should try to preserve today’s budget levels, which would sustain a win-win strategy in
simultaneously fought wars.

Dov S. Zakheim, a defense consultant, was Deputy Under Secretary of Defense in the second
Reagan Administration.