Capabilities-Based Military Planning: The Myth

Following the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent breakup of the Soviet Union only years later, U.S. planners were left with a military force designed to thwart a land-based invasion in Europe, strategically balance former-Soviet nuclear capabilities, and conventionally protect U.S. interests in other regions. The clear communist threat that American forces were designed to deter and, if necessary, fight and win against was subsequently replaced by a world where no distinct danger was readily identifiable. In fact, the U.S. military of 1991 that had successfully fought in Operation DESERT STORM was a legacy force of the Cold War era, although proving more than capable in achieving military objectives in a fairly short amount of time. Following this conflict, however, the U.S. was left with the task of how to plan for future military operations while drawing down forces in an attempt to control spiraling national debt. The use of a threat-based strategy in a world with no clearly defined emerging threat proved to be worrisome. A new approach began to emerge in formulating U.S. national military strategy - capabilities-based planning, or designing a military with distinct asymmetric abilities that could be used universally in different theaters against diverse foes. However, the current Bush administration's most recent construct is a myth in both theory and application, instead relying on key tenets of threat-based planning. Operating with no currently published National Security Strategy (NSS) and updated National Military Strategy (NMS), defense planners are condemned to guesswork on military mission definitions, makeup, scale, and transformation goals that greatly increase the potential for a mismatch between ends, ways, means, and risks spread across the full spectrum of military conflict.