Pandemic Politics: Why the US Marine Corps’ restructuring is the post-COVID-19 military we need
Bob Qu
In August, International Affairs has teamed up with the Future Strategy Forum for the ‘Pandemic Politics’ series on US politics and the COVID-19 pandemic. International Affairs’ 50:50 in 2020 initiative is partnering with the FSF to support its mission of amplifying the expertise of women and share the insights of PhD students on COVID-19 and grand strategy; the military; and democracy.
This week in Pandemic Politics, Eleanor Freund and Leah Matchett’s introduction, as well as Bob Qu’s, Autumn Perkey’s, and Lauren Sukin and Katy Robinson’s blogposts discuss COVID-19 and the military.
Two weeks after the United States shut its borders to travelers from Europe, the US Marine Corps released Force Design 2030, its plan for restructuring over the next decade. It was radical enough to make numerous headlines, despite the pandemic, and generate the kind of controversy rare in the staid world of defence planning documents. Force Design 2030 makes aggressive divestments, including deactivating every tank battalion and reducing total active duty personnel by 12,000. Armour support will be ‘provided by the army’, a throwaway comment guaranteed to exasperate diehard advocates of US Marine Corps independence. It proposes island-hopping tactics for future conflicts in the Pacific that would require a similar reliance on the navy.
Predictably, the plan immediately drew fire. Critics charged that it has a blinkered focus on China that undermined the marines’ flexibility as the nation’s ‘force-in-readiness’. One particularly apocalyptic commentator asked if it heralded the ‘the end of the Marine Corps’. However, Force Design 2030 represents the principles that should be guiding the US military in the wake of COVID-19. Although like any plan it has potential flaws, it is the best model so far for post-pandemic force design thanks to its budgetary decisions and its strategic focus on China.
Cuts to defence budgets
With US GDP forecasted to contract by three per cent over the next decade, Pentagon watchers are already predicting major cuts to defence budgets, potentially approaching the severity of the 2013 budget sequestration. The military’s tepid response to the pandemic, and its much-criticized role in suppressing the Black Lives Matter protests after the death of George Floyd, have also eroded its credibility. Future congresses are unlikely to look charitably on requests for increased defence spending.
The pandemic has heightened the need for ruthless prioritization and the US Marine Corps’ Force Design 2030 shows it is acutely aware of this. This is clearly visible in the plan’s most important assumption, which it states bluntly: ‘Operating under the assumption that we will not receive additional resources, we must divest certain existing capabilities and capacities to free resources for essential new capabilities’. It does not get much more ruthless than eliminating all tanks and slashing active duty personnel by over 6 per cent. All told, the US Marine Corps anticipates its cuts will free up US$12 billion in funds, which it is likely to sorely need.
Focus on China
Arguments that the plan has a dangerously blinkered focus on China are also wrong. For one, they overlooks the fact that the new capabilities envisioned in the plan would actually bring advantages in every conceivable conflict, not just one with China. More importantly, the pandemic has accelerated trends towards a sharper US–China rivalry. China has become more aggressive and assertive during the pandemic than might otherwise have been expected at this point in time. It is deliberately insulating its defence budget (which may already be larger than it seems) from coronavirus-related pressures. In this light, the focus on China is less blinkered than prescient.
Pandemic Politics: Why the military should not intervene in domestic protests
Autumn Perkey
medium.com
Specifically, Force Design 2030 proposes ‘stand-in forces’ that can survive, move and be effective within the range of China’s burgeoning missile arsenal — along, for instance, the first island chain, which comprises disputed islands as well as allies like Japan. These forces could credibly threaten to impose high costs on potential Chinese military action, without being as provocative as Japanese rearmament or the sale of F/A-18s to Taiwan. They would also be vastly less vulnerable than, say, the two carrier groups the US sent into the Pacific in early June. As one analyst has noted, ‘in a conflict around China’s periphery, China’s development of advanced conventional missiles highlights the potential vulnerability of fixed facilities, such as air bases, as well as surface ships, [including] US aircraft carriers’. The US Marine Corps should be commended for its efforts to counter these developments.
Problems that could arise
Force Design 2030 is not without flaws. For one, its divestments are more tangible than its investments. It is easy to visualize the tanks that are going away, and hard to imagine the unproven platforms those savings will buy. This can be nerve-wracking given the plan’s reliance on such platforms to make stand-in forces an effective deterrent. The plan must also endure the realities of the budgeting process. Congress is notorious for forcing things onto the services that they do not want. Ideally, the services will take advantage of a shrinking budget to downsize legacy programs. But it is easy to imagine a scenario in which those programmes are retained, at the expense of modernization.
Conclusion
Despite these problems, the US Marine Corps has proposed the best strategy for adapting the military to COVID-19 and its aftermath. The hard truth is that the US military is facing a sharp retrenchment, even as challenges to American interests worldwide are increasing. It must learn to do more with less. By embracing divestiture and developing an operational concept predicated on deterring a great power war, the US Marine Corps is setting the pace for how to adapt to a post-COVID-19 world.
Bob Qu is an infantry officer in the US Marine Corps. He is currently obtaining a MA in History at the University of Virginia as part of the Advanced Degree Program.
In August, International Affairs has teamed up with the Future Strategy Forum for the ‘Pandemic Politics’ series on US politics and the COVID-19 pandemic. This series is made possible by The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and the Bridging the Gap Project (BtG).
