OPINION:
Sen. John McCain was the dominant Republican voice on national security since the end of George W. Bush’s presidency. Mr. McCain’s policies, however, were an inconsistent hodgepodge of immigration amnesty, dedication to the failed nation-building strategy and politically second-guessing the Pentagon which didn’t deserve it as often as it did.
Because President Trump seems disinterested in the details of these issues, a new Republican congressional leader needs to arise who can credibly advocate a strong and consistently conservative defense agenda.
Mr. McCain’s influence was heaviest on the issue of how to fight the global war against terrorist networks and the nations that sponsor them. His influence was also felt strongly on the matters of U.S. space capabilities, force structure and a host of other subjects.
As early as October 2001, just as the first Army Special Forces troops were entering Afghanistan, Mr. McCain was already referring to Iraq as “stage two” in the war. He was an early and fervent supporter of President Bush’s nation-building strategy. In a July 2008 speech during his presidential campaign, Mr. McCain said that the troop surge and counterinsurgency strategy (“COIN”) in Iraq had succeeded, and that the same surge/COIN strategy was the path to victory in Afghanistan.
Victory in any war means defeating an adversary and creating a result beneficial to American national security that lasts for years, not weeks or months. Nation-building has failed to do that in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Bush, President Obama and now Mr. Trump have all fallen into the quagmire that strategy creates. Mr. McCain, despite the facts on the ground, never accepted that nation-building had failed.
Because nation-building has failed, Republicans need to clearly divorce themselves from it and craft a better approach to what Mr. Bush called the “global war on terror.”
There are many options being proffered, from the “privatization” of the Afghanistan war using permanent mercenary forces to withdrawing our ground forces from Afghanistan while leaving behind special operations forces, air forces and intelligence to destroy the Taliban’s leaders, supply lines and sources of funding. The latter seems a better reflection of conservative principles because it focuses on the threat, not on imposing a democracy where none has ever existed.
For decades, America’s defense strategy has been highly dependent on satellites for everything from spying to secure communications. Mr. McCain was forceful in attempting to reduce the cost of launching space vehicles into orbit. He fought against the use of Russian-made RD-180 rocket engines by our primary launch contractor, United Launch Alliance. He was entirely correct in demanding that U.S.-made rocket engines be used because they free us from the interruption of Russian supplies.
Mr. McCain accused the Air Force of discriminating against SpaceX, Elon Musk’s venture into launch services. But the Air Force was correct in not trusting our “crown jewels,” what former chief of staff Gen. Norton Schwartz called the classified payloads, to unproven launch vehicles. Gen. Schwartz’s distrust of SpaceX was proven justified earlier this year when it launched the Zuma classified payload, which was lost after failing to reach the proper orbit.
Payloads such as Zuma — which was almost certainly a spy satellite — routinely cost more than a billion dollars. Losing Zuma meant not only losing the cost of the satellite and the cost of launching it. We lost the benefit of the satellite’s functions, which may be crucial to intelligence gathering, and we also lost the time — usually a year or more — that it would take to build a replacement.
A better, more conservative, approach would be to ensure a U.S. source for rocket engines (which is now being done) and to compete launch services among proven launch service providers such as United Launch Alliance.
Mr. McCain’s major influence on the structure of our forces had a long reach. But, like any politician, his views were often more political than substantive. For more than a decade, there has been a dearth of thought among Republicans on what forces are needed to answer specific threats and no solid analysis comparing what we have with what we need.
Someone, perhaps House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, Texas Republican, should revive the “defense planning” process of the Reagan administration.
Under President Reagan, an annual assessment of defense needs was made by comparing defense assets with the threats in terms of the intentions and capabilities of our adversaries. The result was a Pentagon planning document which determined the necessary size of our military — including the specific assets such as ships, aircraft, satellites and others — which could deter or defeat the principal threats we face. It maximized the options a president has to deal regarding both crises and long-term threats.
Since the Reagan days, that function was supposed to be accomplished in the Quadrennial Defense Review, which has become little more than a Pentagon wish list politicized to accommodate congressional demands. Mr. Thornberry, or another defense leader, should act to reform the Quadrennial Defense Review process and force it back to the Reagan model, done annually or quadrennially.
New thinking among Republicans can remedy the problems created during the McCain era. A new strategy for the “global war on terror,” a hard-nosed new version of the Quadrennial Defense Review and a better means of launching national defense space vehicles reliably will do that job.
• Jed Babbin, a deputy undersecretary of defense in the George H.W. Bush administration, is the author of “In the Words of Our Enemies.”
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