After a few weeks of fighting Iran, the U.S. has some lessons to learn that can be applied in any war with Red China.
Some lessons are simple: “After 16 years and $8 billion, the military’s new GPS software still doesn’t work.” Solving this will be tough: “The service is weighing options for how to proceed, including possibly canceling the program entirely.”
Other simple lessons worth noting include the fact that an enemy cannot be forced to negotiate. Also, that offers to negotiate may fail if they are ultimatums. And that air power has its limits.
The stock market, they say, can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. And so can the enemy, who should have surrendered weeks ago. But cheap victories are hard to come by.
Horizontal escalation
One development that seems to have surprised politicians and the press is that “allies” may renege. “Horizontal escalation” may shake them loose.
We are rediscovering the “horizontal escalation” model. A columnist in Foreign Affairs magazine defines it as “a bid to transform the stakes of a conflict by widening its scope and extending its duration….
“And it has worked in the past, to the detriment of the United States. In Vietnam and Serbia, U.S. adversaries responded to overwhelming displays of American airpower with horizontal escalation, eventually leading to American defeat, in the former case, and, in the latter, frustrating U.S. war aims and spurring the worst episode of ethnic cleansing in Europe since World War II.”
In fact, this Foreign Affairs author argues that such escalation favors Iran.
The “horizontal escalation” we have seen in the current war far transcends Red China’s “asymmetric warfare” or, to put it more aptly, its “military operations other than war” which, as advertised, are deployed in peacetime: lawfare, incursions, cyber attacks, economic sanctions, etc.
Some of the “horizontal” innovations we are seeing now include strikes against U.S. targets wherever they are, strikes against U.S. enablers wherever they are, and strikes against U.S. commercial entities.
None of these have provoked retaliation from third parties, which is remarkable. Could there be a similar outcome in the Far East?
Alliances…?
But let’s return to the matter of allies. The public imagines an alliance to be a pledge of mutual help. But there is a structural problem with the American system of alliances in Europe and Asia that is aggravated by horizontal warfare. Our alliance-like arrangements optimize opting out.
When Washington seems surprised by the number of “allied” opt-outs, we have to conclude that the politicians have the same idea of “alliance” as the public, not realizing that we have no such mutual agreements.
They have fooled themselves by listening to journalists who like to call anything, down to an international postal agreement, an “alliance.” Analysts and think tankers also seem to revel in the term without analyzing the underlying agreements.
Our “alliances” in Europe and Asia—or rather, our bilateral defense-related agreements—generally consist of base agreements and sales of weapons and related tech. Occasionally, an agreement will include a security guarantee for the other party but not for the United States.
That’s it, folks. Is that your idea of an “alliance”?
Have a look at the individual treaties. The base agreements, further, seem to be restricted, so that Spain, Italy, etc. can prevent the use of bases for purposes not authorized by the host government. Sean Murphy provides a nice summary of these deals.
Have a look also at the arrangements we have with the Philippines, which atypically includes some mutuality, though very weak: “The 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty supplemented the bases agreement. It emphasizes a mutual commitment to peacefully resolve international disputes, separately or jointly developing capacity to resist attack, and the need for consultation when the territorial integrity, political independence, or security of the United States or the Philippines is under threat of attack in the Pacific.”
NATO
Any talk about “alliances” often involves NATO. But NATO is a defensive pact that allows each member to gauge the extent of its own response to any attack on fellow members. Read Article Five. There is mutuality, but it is of the opt-in type.
Constant U.S. reliance on NATO as an all-purpose alliance, which it is not and cannot be, encourages politicians and journalists to miscalculate and disappoint themselves. These same people see “alliances” between Beijing and Moscow or Beijing and Iran.
They will expect our Asian, let’s call them partners, to behave like full-fledged allies when the chips are down. They will plan on it. A look at the underlying agreements suggests they will be disappointed. With Japan, for instance, we have the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security. The U.S. must aid Japan if Japan is attacked, but Japan is not obliged to defend the U.S.
With the Philippines, the U.S. has a base agreement, arms sales, and joint exercises but no obligations for Manila to defend the U.S. Even the Council on Foreign Relations, which should know better, calls this a “U.S.-Philippines Defense Alliance.”
SEATO
Let’s not forget the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), a weak treaty with NATO-like optionality that dissolved in 1977. So we don’t even have that going for us.
These houses of straw can be blown over, as we are seeing during the conflict with Iran. If the United States cannot make binding mutual defense agreements, it should at least adjust its expectations so that it may make more realistic plans. □
James Roth works for a major defense contractor in Virginia.
