Peter Brooks argued in an op-ed yesterday that the entire defense budget needs to grow. A valid point, but it dodges the inescapable trade-offs we’ll face in any budget. We can’t buy everything, and what we do buy needs to be driven by a strategic assessment of the dangers we face. Saying “we need more” needs to be followed with a clear statement of what we need more of. If this isn’t addressed, the real issue will continue to fester.

Brooks offers three examples of how USN and USAF assets will be pivotal in three future threat scenarios: in Iran, in the Taiwan Straights, and in South Korea. In the Iran case, he argues that

Iran: An attack would likely be executed by U.S. air and sea strikes, not ground forces (but don’t count out special ops).

Air Force B-2 bombers and F-117, F-15 and F-16 strike fighters would drop GPS-guided JDAM and gravity bombs on Iranian air defenses, nuclear facilities and retaliatory forces such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The Navy would chime in with carrier-based aviation and surface ships or submarines in the Persian Gulf and the North Arabian Sea, dropping bombs and firing cruise missiles at Iran’s nuclear sites, air defenses and naval assets.

The bolded section points to the flaw in Brooks’ strategic perspective. Iran demonstrated last summer that some of its most devestating relaliatory forces are not located within its borders and not wearing Iranian uniforms. US intelligence studies have indicated that Iranian retaliation would likely take the form of “…using oil as a weapon, attacking Americans in Iraq and elsewhere, unleashing Hezbollah or deploying other tactics.” Our attacks might not use masses of ground forces, but Iran would seek retaliation options that couldn’t be countered by our air and sea power.

Thus, we are reminded again of the futility of attempting to find a narrow military solution to a strategic problem with political, economic, social and religious dimensions. Within this context, does it make sense to put more of our finite resources into the areas where we already overmatch potential adversaries? Or does it make sense to invest in being able to counter the weak points that our adversaries would seek to exploit? More air and navel power won’t keep Iran from unleashing Hezbollah or inciting insurgent attacks against American forces in Iraq, and the cost of more air and navel power comes at the expense of developing the other capabilities that would address those threats.

So, in short, we may need more but without specifying what we need more of the assertion is useless. Just buying more of our old force structure doesn’t make sense in our geostrategic environment. Mitigating current retaliatory threats will require investments like more foreign aid to counter Hezbollah’s support base and more resilient economic systems to weather a sudden spike oil prices. Our armed forces are just one aspect of the solution set to national security threats and our best mitigation options require better integration between the military and everything else (from State to DHS to NGOs to transnational corporations).