The Simple Way to Save the U.S. Military

Daniel L. Davis

Security, Americas

Ditch unnecessary missions.

Within the past few months the Pentagon has announced the deployment of new combat power in Norway, Poland, Lithuania, Syria and Africa. This extends (and accelerates) a trend expanding the deployment of military power abroad. This alarming development is not in response to any expanding military threat. In fact, there is little observable rationale at all. The incoming administration and new Congress have a chance to rectify this dangerous tendency. If they fail to do so, then the risks to American national security will rise to dangerous levels.

There is no grand strategy discernible in the multiple and simultaneous global deployments recently ordered, but neither is there a unifying vision for how military forces will be used in the theaters into which they are sent. For example, beginning in 2014 the president authorized the deployment of a small number of troops to Iraq, and the following year gave the order to begin air strikes in Syria. Since that time, however, the size and scope of both missions have been consistently expanded in small increments.

At no time since the missions began has the White House clearly articulated a strategy and national objective for this use of force. Whenever deployments are announced by the Pentagon, its military leaders explain the tactical purpose of sending the troops on missions—i.e., explain that troops will go and help a rebel group or that jets will attack an extremist organization—but those leaders don’t discuss what the missions are intended to accomplish.

Such omissions make it impossible to determine if there is any utility to the nation in conducting a given task. Additionally, there are no metrics by which the tactical utility of the mission could later be measured. U.S. military personnel are the most capable and trained forces in the world, and they successfully accomplish the vast majority of tactical tasks given to them. But since there are no metrics to gauge mission success, then no one can say whether those successful tactical engagements contribute to U.S. national security.