General Mark Milley spoke to The National Press Club on July 27, 2017 about changes in the “nature of the character of war” that will require modifications for the future of the United States military. Beginning at 30:52 in video link.
War is a political act
“War is a political act” where your political will is imposed on your opponent through the use of violence. The “nature of war is political.” How is the political war going to be fought in the future?
Milley believes the “character of war, the way you fight a war” and the weapons used are “going through a fundamental change”.Fighting will be in more populated urban settings and technology with artificial intelligence and robotics will be making changes to warfare.
Urban warfare
Armies in the past were optimized to fight in rural areas. Gently rolling hills, sands and deserts were optimized. Jungles and mountains were sub-optimized. Fighting in urban areas was also sub-optimized. This will need to change. A century and a half of societal urbanization is only increasing with the curve going exponential. By the mid-century 80 – 90% of the projected 8 billion people will be “concentrated in highly dense urban areas”. The open country of northern Europe or deserts of the Middle East to highly dense urban areas will require “significant and fundamental” changes to the military force.
War is politics and politics is all about people. With the urbanization of the global population the future battlefields will be in urban areas, such as happened recently in Mosul. Armies will need to optimize for combat operations in urban areas. This will require changes in the size of the force, command and control, operations of movement, and the weapon systems.
Robot warfare
The US is on the leading edge of a revolution in robotics says General Milley. In the “commercial sphere’ robotics are being used more and more. Unmanned aerial (drones) and maritime vehicles are already being used by the military in a limited way. “Eventually we will see the introduction of wide scale robotics”, including on land. “All areas that move, shoot and communicate are being impacted very, very rapidly by technology at a speed and a scope unlike anything we’ve seen in history. The combinations of terrain and the combination of technology is significant” and “leading to a fundamental change in the character of warfare”.
The future of the of war is not certain. War is always dealing in the realm of uncertainty, friction, chance and human will.
General Mark Milley speaks about the role of the US military to maintain the post-WWII liberal global order at the National Press Club, 25:35 to 30:52 in link.
World order relies on US military power
Why does the US need a large military? That depends on what you want the military to be able to accomplish. The United States has been a global military since WWI.
The Breton Woods agreement in July 1944 after WWII established the “international order, the rules and regimes by which the world runs today”. “For seven decades the world has had a certain set of rules emphasizing things like” free trade, international commerce, democracy, human rights and the “liberal world order”. There are institutions that this “world order” rests upon like the United Nations, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and many others. “One of the significant roles of the United States military for seven decades has been to enforce that world order, to maintain it, to maintain its stability.
Role of world police is in US national interest
This role is in “our interest because in the last half of the century there was a blood letting unlike any that had ever occurred in the history of mankind” when “between 1914 and 1945 one hundred million people were slaughtered in the conduct of war and that is a horrible, horrible nightmare.”
By United States Army (Chief of Staff[1]) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Milley’s mother was in the Navy and his father was in the Marines during World War II. His father “hit the beach in Iwo Jima where 7,000 Marines were killed in 19 days and 34,000 wounded and 22,000 Japanese killed on an island that was 2 miles by 4 miles.”
During WWII there were “millions of Chinese killed”. Milley soberly reminds us that”If you want a real trail of tears – go to Eastern Europe and see what happened in Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania. It’s horrific.” One third of the men in Ukraine and Belarus were killed. In Poland 90% of Jews were killed.
Milley passionately states: “It’s a horrific picture that occurred. Those people who were in leadership positions in 1945 said never again. We can’t keep doing this… this is insane!”
This wasn’t the first time that leaders had tried to put constraints on war by agreement. Milley gives history that “the same thing in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars” with the the “Concert of Europe and that worked well for 100 years. For one century they kept the long peace in Europe – more or less. There were a couple of minor flareups, but there wasn’t a continental wide war until 1914.”
After two horrific world wars the leaders tried “again in 1945 to set up a system that would try to retain global peace and prevent war between great powers and great power states throughout the world.” That system relies on the hegemony and power of the United States people and our military.
Milley emphasizes that the global “system is under stress, intense stress, today. That system is under stress from revolutionaries and terrorists and guerrillas. It’s under stress from nation states that don’t like the rules of the road that were written and want to revise those rules.” “That system is under very intense stress.” “We’re at seventy years now and that system has prevented great power war similar to what occurred in the first half of the last century.
How big is big enough?
“So the question is how big an army do you want? How big a navy do you want? Well, how much do you want that system? How much do you value that system? Is that system worth preserving or not?” That determines the size and scope of your armies, your navies, and air forces and Marines. Rightly or wrongly, fairly or unfairly the role of the arbiter of that system has defaulted to the United States for seven decades. There are other countries, 60 or 70, that have allied themselves with their militaries to us and they make significant contributions, but the United States has been the leader that system.”
“So the status of the army as part of the military force that works to help maintain the stability of the world. We’re a global military and we are a global army.”
“We’ve got, right now today, about 180,000 soldiers in the United States army active duty, reserve and National Guard deployed in about 140 different countries around the world helping to stabilize that system. That’s a significant amount of US forces.
Not all of them are in combat. Most of those that are in combat are in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere. Around the entire globe are 180,000. That’s not a small number. That’s about 20% of the army as a whole. The active army is less than 500,000 right now. Based on the tasks that are required Milley believes there is a need for a larger army and “stronger and more capable” because of the “tasks that are required”. the concept is that policing the world is the role of the United States military. The the US global hegemony will to support global order and overall peace to prevent another catastrophic world war.
Speaks about “the world in a nutshell” with the current “global strategic environment” from 13:44 to 25:42 in the above linked video.
General James Mattis, Secretary of Defense, is leading a detailed strategic review process of the US military, which may be completed “sometime in the Fall” 2017, which may alter the evaluation of the security focus.
There are many ways to classify global security threats, but currently the Department of Defense uses a mnemonic system of “4 + 1” to rank global challenges for 4 nation states (Russia, China, North Korea, Iran) and of 1 non-nation state of violent extremist terrorist organizations that “seek to do damage to US national interest” (Al Qaeda, Taliban, ISIS, Al Nusra Front and similar groups). These challenges are how DOD decides on the size of the force and how to equip the joint force.
The “capability and will” of a threat are used to evaluate their risk.
Milley states that Russia and China are not our enemies. An “enemy” is a group or a nation state our military is actively engaged with in armed conflict. Milley points out that “Competition is one thing, even if adversarial”. There is a “giant difference between open conflict and those activities below open conflict.” A “conflict below open conflict is a desirable goal”, especially with Russia and China due to their “size, capacity, and capability”.
Russia
Russian “military capability is significant” and “extraordinary”. Russia is the “only country on earth that represents an existential threat” “because they have the inherent capability of nuclear weapons” that could “strike and destroy” the United States. Other countries have nuclear capabilities, but only Russia has the “capability to actually destroy the United States”. Russia’s conventional military capability has been “modernized significantly” in the last 5 to 15 years.
“Will or intent” is a subjective judgment. “All we know from behavior is that Russia has acted aggressively externally to its boundaries in places like Crimea and Georgia and the Donetsk region of Ukraine and elsewhere”. They also “operate and try to undermine things like elections in European countries and other countries”, as well as cyber activity and “various non-military direct action pressures”.
General Milley asks “Why are they behaving like that?”. There are many debated reasons.
Milley states his personal military view is that “Russian leadership is a purely rational actor” operating off of “traditional cost benefit as they perceive it”. Milley believes Russian aggression can be deterred. Even though Russia does “undermine the United States interests in Europe and elsewhere” that Russia also has “areas of common interests”. Russia as a “great power” is a country that the United States needs to “cautiously” and with “deliberate forethought work towards common objectives and prevent undermining of our interests”. This is a “delicate balance”, but the United States has done this before and can continue to do so with Russia. “That will involve assuring our allies and partners while deterring further aggression”, but can be “properly managed”.
China
China is “a significant rising power”. Since 1979 China has advanced and developed economically. China’s economic power is “one of the most significant, if not the most significant” “shifts in global economic power in the last 5 centuries” since the “rise of the West and the industrial revolution”.
The “Chinese economic growth over the last 40 years is really, really significant” says Milley. “Historically when economic power shifts so significantly then military power typically follows.” Milley believes this is happening with the significant increase in size and strength of Chinese military capabilities.
Milley asks “What is their will and intent? What is their purpose? What are they trying to do?” He points out that the Chinese have been fairly transparent” in laying out their “China dream. China wants to reestablish their historic 5,000 year role to be the “most significant power in Asia”, as well as become a global “co-equal with the United States” by mid-century. They would “like to do this peacefully” with a “win-win strategy”, but are also building up a military force if necessary to pursue their goals.
China is “an extremely rational actor”. Milley believes, as with Russia, that “proper leadership and engagement and deterrence and assurance measures that we can work our way into the future without significant armed conflict.”
Iran
The country’s desire for a nuclear weapon has “sort of been put on pause.” “We hope for good, but are watching that very closely.”
What is Iran’s intent? Milley notes that we know with “certainty that Iran consciously and with malfeasance of forethought tries to undermine US national security interests in the Middle East.” They do this with many direct means of supporting terrorism. The US is “always in a posture relative to Iran to support our friends and allies in the region and to be very, very wary of Iran”.
North Korea
Milley thinks North Korea is the “single greatest threat to the international community and facing the United States” as a “near term, very significant threat”. North Korea has “advanced significantly and quicker than many had expected with an intercontinental ballistic missile technology that could possibly strike the United States”. The US policy for many decades has been the “objective that North Korea would not possess nuclear weapons” and “certainly” not have the ability to have nuclear weapons that can strike the United States.
“North Korea is extremely dangerous and gets more dangerous as the weeks go by.” Milley points out that most of the information is classified, so couldn’t give many details. The US is trying a “wide variety of methods in the diplomatic and economic sphere” to bring a peaceful resolution, but “time is running out a bit”.
Terrorist organizations
There are situations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and west Africa with each having “different factors and analysis with every country being slightly different, so you can’t group all of them into one.” Milley thinks we are in a “very long struggle against violent extremist organizations, terrorist organizations”.
These groups have a radically different view of the world than we do and their intent is to “consciously kill Americans and undermine American interests”. They also want to “kill other locals, friends and partners not only in the Middle East”, but elsewhere. The military works “by, through and with our partners in the region and increase their capabilities and try to reduce terrorist threats to where local police forces and local intelligent forces can manage at a local level”.
Milley believes “We will destroy the organization entity called ISIS.” with the Caliphate and “traditional organizational structures” in the “not too distant future”. The followers will likely disperse morphing into different radical groups. Milley notes that the “very radical ideology” of these groups “ultimately will have to be destroyed mostly by the people’s of the region.”
