FPRI offers window into Robert Kaplan’s current thinking. His ultimate conclusion: we’re returning to “a world of 19th-century balance of power on several different levels.” What I found most interesting, however, was the implied commentary on strategic trade-offs, force composition and force planning questions.

Kaplan emphasized navies because right now the U.S. is obsessed with low-tech land wars, even though 70-80 percent of all goods and commercial items in this globalized age travel by sea.

Contained within “obsessed” is a melange of half-truths and vague assertions. The US is devoting considerably more attention to counterinsurgency and SSTR than it was seven years ago, but then it was devoting hardly any attention to COIN in 2000. The description is also misleading because the DoD budget remains strikingly unobsessed with low-tech wars.

Counterinsurgency will certainly play a part in America’s future, he said, but probably only a part.

This is a complete strawman; no one argues that counterinsurgency will be the entirity of America’s future.

We’re well into the thick of the fight over the defense establishment’s capability portfolio for the 21st Century. Legacy interests use a host of arguments to make COIN and low-tech, low-intensity warfare sound like it has been over emphasized. So you’ll read lots of articles warning that SSTR is “only a part” of the future missions set (a statement no one argues with), or that current conflicts don’t represent future conflicts, or that we’ve dangerously neglected our traditional hard-power assets with an excessive focus on COIN. “Procurement holidays” and “neglected threats” figure prominently in these arguments.

Service culture, rivalries and inertia play a large role in all of this, as do organizational dynamics. One cannot understand the shape of the debate without including these dimensions.

The debate needs to establish the relative importance of these capabilities. Sure, in a perfect world it would be great to have a 600 ship navy with the latest technology, a 1,000,000 strong army with soldiers specializing in every form of operation from SSTR to traditional armor-heavy engagements with high-tech adversaries and an air force fielding cutting-edge UAVs and UCAVs while also deploying 5th generation fighters while researching their 6th generation replacements. But strategy is all about trade-0ffs, relative importance and setting priorities. This article makes it seem that Kaplan sidesteps these - the most important questions - with vague simplifications. One could devote billions to returning America’s submarine industry to its Cold War peak. Or those billions could be spent on UCAVs. Or on expanding Army end-strength. The question for a strategist is, which one makes more sense?

In all of this, one of the dynamics to track is how the various services prepare and respond for the aftermath of Iraq. Do any of them take the SSTR mission seriously, or will they all work to expunge any trace of the experience and organizational adapatations from themselves (as they did after Vietnam)? Given how hostile existing organizational dynamics are to SSTR missions, if one does not argue aggressively for including these capabilities into future force planning, then one is tacitly supporting a complete return to traditional scenarios and priorities.