| 摘要 | Editor’s note: The next president is in for a rough welcome to the Oval Office given the list of immediate crises and slow-burning policy challenges, both foreign and domestic. What should Washington do? Why should the average American care? We’ve set out to clearly define US strategic interests and provide actionable policy solutions to help the new administration build a 2017 agenda that strengthens American leadership abroad while bolstering prosperity at home.
What to Do: Policy Recommendations for 2017 is an ongoing project from AEI. Click here for access to the complete series, which addresses a wide range of issues from rebuilding America’s military to higher education reform to helping people find work.
President Donald Trump has made much fanfare over reversing course on his predecessor’s policies and priorities. From health care to climate change, the president has relished taking the inverse of former President Barack Obama’s positions. But this has not proved to be the case with respect to national security. When it comes to national security, Trump’s policies have represented more of a change in style than a complete course correction.
That trend is not good news for America’s special operations forces. While America’s special operators reached new heights under Obama over the last eight years, they were also chosen for a host of missions that could just as well have been performed by conventional forces. Meanwhile, the force that receives just 1.8 percent of the Pentagon’s budget continued to expand the scope and scale of its operations, taking even more resources and attention away from the already neglected disciplines of civil affairs, military information support operations and regional expertise.
In a recent hearing, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict Theresa Whelan reaffirmed that special operators are the “vanguard” of the military. Sure enough, special operations forces are at the forefront of just about everything these days.
Last week, for example, when the Free Syrian Army and Kurdish forces launched a siegeupon Raqqa, the Syrian city that for years has served as the de facto capital of the Islamic State group, American special operations forces were close at hand to advise and assist. Trump’s deployment of Marines to Syria to provide artillery support was a good first step, but special operations forces still make up the bulk of America’s presence there. Moreover, a decade of repeated deployments has diminished readiness: Special operations forces command is repeatedly forced to “mortgage the future” in order to bear the lion’s share of the burden for today’s wars.
The special operations forces portfolio isn’t limited to conflict hot spots, nor is it limited to the kinds of “direct action” missions that frequently make the news. Far from it. America’s approximately 8,000 special operators across the services – no, that’s not a typo – are involved in 80 countries around the world, running advise and assist missions, supporting foreign internal defense efforts and addressing asymmetric threats. Meanwhile, U.S. Special Operations Command recently assumed government-wide responsibility for the global, counter-weapons of mass destruction mission and has also expanded its footprintin cyberspace.
To maintain their status as the military’s “vanguard” force, special operators should prioritize involvement in emerging threats that confound the other services. Yet as special operations forces power has been applied to just about every national security problem over the past eight years, the feverish operations tempo has begun to take its toll. According to Whelan, the crush of repeated deployments and competing mission sets have distracted special operations forces from developing a counter-unconventional warfare strategy, one of the most pressing issues of our time.
Echoing these concerns, a recent study by the Government Accountability Office found that, between 2001 and 2014, the number of deployed special operations forces personnel had increased by 148 percent. The study further found that the budget dedicated to special operations forces had increased by 213 percent over the same period. But many of special operations forces’ “indirect” capabilities have faced neglect as successive budgets have prioritized direct action missions.
Though Trump’s recent budget for U.S. Special Operations Command increases research and development spending, it also increases procurement spending for equipment related to direct action missions, such as ground combat systems and ordnance. Many of these acquisitions will simply replenish or replace equipment that has been worn out over many years of combat. Yet that would also presuppose that the scope of the special operations forces’ mission set should remain unchanged – an unsustainable and risky prospect.
Fortunately, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford recognizes that special operations forces are burning both ends of the candle. At a recent hearing he announced that special operations forces’ responsibilities will be reviewed to determine which mission sets should be offloaded to the conventional forces – a welcome initiative for which I have advocated for years. Done properly, the review has the potential to reinvigorate Special Operations Command and reshape its role in the national security apparatus for years to come.
The conversation about the future of special operations forces is inseparable from the larger dialogue that the Trump administration needs to have about America’s national security priorities. Bearing this in mind, there are a few issues that the joint chiefs should consider before correcting special operations forces’ course. They should consider what mission sets require the innovative, agile and flexible approach provided for by special operations forces, and which require the presence, persistence and mass of the conventional force. They should consider the changing threat environment, and recognize that what we now consider “unconventional warfare” may in fact represent the new normalof international competition. Lastly, they should consider how to balance special operations forces capabilities not just with conventional forces, but also with the intelligence community, the Department of State, U.S. Cyber Command and the Department of the Treasury.
Change will take time. Determining the proper role of special operations forces and ensuring that they are equipped with the necessary resources and authorities to carry out their mission will not take place overnight. What’s needed now is a course correction. Rather than tinkering with inherited policies, Trump should replicate the counter-Obama approach he has taken to other issues. The place of special operations forces in our national security toolkit may very well depend on it. |
