OPTEMPO

OPTEMPO is a term of military art, short for operational tempo and meaning the rate at which a force can engage in operations of a given size. For example, as the 1990s wore on, the government was reducing the Army from 18 active divisions to 10, cutting the Navy by something like 44% and lowering the number of active Air Force squadrons. At the same time, the military was being used for more tasks, and more of them were long-term commitments (such as Kosovo and Bosnia) instead of quick in-and-out missions. The practical upshot of this was that the OPTEMPO of the military was increasing while its resources were dramatically decreasing, and the result was that we were barely able to meet our commitments before the Terror Wars started. The shift in global strategy from "win two theater wars" to "win one/hold one" came before the terror wars, and was made not because it was a good idea so much as because we couldn't afford "win two".

It should be noted that our forces have not enlarged notably during the conduct (so far) of the Terror Wars, while our OPTEMPO has increased markedly yet again.

Our best possible OPTEMPO for operations the size of the liberation and pacification of Iraq is two years. That will only be possible if Iraq calms down significantly after the transfer of power to an interim government, or if we adopt something akin to the Roman imperial model, using mostly local forces for keeping order. (See the "More..." link below for an important digression on this.) This is an OPTEMPO that the enemy can, barely, afford to match.

When the fight was almost entirely in Afghanistan, the enemy was largely engaged there, but also had sufficient resources to expand its European and American networks, to undertake offensive operations in SE Asia (including most notably the Bali bombing), and to expand its operations in Africa.

However, once the US invaded Iraq, it was necessary for the enemy to shift a large operational force into Iraq. If Iraq becomes peaceful, more or less allied with the US (or at least not against us), and shifts to an Enlightenment-style nation with individual liberties and representative governance, it will provide a power cultural dynamic to end the conditions that allow the enemy to renew its losses over the long-term. Thus the enemy must defeat the coalition in Iraq. To that end, even while conditions in Pashtunistan are such that the Taliban could undertake large-scale operations, they have not done so. Too many of the al Qaeda forces have been moved out-of-area, and the Pakistani/US offensive along the Afghan/Pakistani border has been effective in disrupting their operations.

At the same time, our and allied operations in the Phillipines and Indonesia have been putting pressure on enemy operations there, the US and some European countries have been cracking in-country terror cells, and there is apparently a US threat to the NE African area currently being assembled. While it is likely that Europe will be a major enemy theater over the next year or more, reduced enemy operations in other areas (and their likely losses in Iraq now that they've been forced into open operations rather than hit-and-run guerilla operations) tell us, I think, that the enemy is operating near the limit of its effective OPTEMPO. If the coalition had the force levels to permit action on a yearly basis, or comfortably on a bi-yearly basis with enough reserve capability to undertake smaller operations in the off years, the enemy would be quickly torn apart as it attempted to orient against too many simultaneous threats to effectively counter. The enemy would have to start giving up some fights almost uncontested, which would further increase our OPTEMPO and thus decrease their own in a vicious (for them) spiral.

In a way, this is how the USSR was defeated, although it wasn't with actual operations, but potential operations, that we defeated the USSR. Because we were acquiring the capability to operate so much more effectively in so many more areas, the USSR had to match our capabilities growth or fold. They couldn't match us, so they folded.

Much the same needs to happen now, but this time with actual operations. But we cannot increase our OPTEMPO, because our coalition partners (even if we added in other free nations as willing partners, rather than neutrals or semi-enemies) cannot add much to our force levels, and we are stretched to almost our absolute limit in deployments. (Our only options at this point for additional deployments would be to deploy all of our land forces simultaneously, which would in a very short time (maybe two years) make many of our units much less effective in combat, due to lack of time to rest, reconstitute, reequip and retrain; or to fully mobilize the reserves and maybe even the National Guard, which would be expensive both in immediate terms and in losses to the economy.)

However, there is another option. It would take some two to three years at least to bring our forces up to the level we had at the end of the Cold War, but it could be done without unduly burdening the economy (particularly if we cared enough about it to stop expanding spending for non-defense programs, and rolled back the prescription drug benefit recently enacted). Over the time that we were ramping up, we would be gradually expanding our OPTEMPO, by adding in more mid-level operations (like cleaning Hezbollah out of Lebanon, taking out enemy operations in Africa or Indonesia and the like).

The mere threat of this expansion would be enough to pressure fence-sitting nations like Egypt to act more in our interest, as Libya recently has done. The eventual ability to employ that force fully would make it impossible for the enemy to keep up. If we maintained an occupation of Syria, Iraq and Iran simultaneously, the enemy would be so stretched as to come apart. All that is lacking is the political will to expand the forces available to us.

A lot of people have a very wrong view of imperial structures and effects. This is because imperialism, mercantilism and colonialism are very frequently combined under the term "imperialism".

Mercantilism and colonialism resulted in attempts to politically control either the economies (mercantilism) or the entire political structures (colonialism) of the imperial possession, to the economic benefit of the imperial power.

There is an older imperial model though: that of Rome. The Roman empire expanded by force when it felt threatened (or when it saw a particularly rich opportunity), but for the most part the Romans pretended to have clientele - client states which were protected by Rome from existential threats, and in return protected Rome from the barbarians outside the borders of the empire, and frequently also provided tribute or soldiers for the legions or both. The main purpose of the Roman empire, in other words, was to ensure that the core was peaceful. This worked so well that Rome was eventually brought down by a combination of the corruption and decay endemic to a society at peace for a long time (and yes, it's apparent to some degree in our own, particularly in the nihilism of the Left) and the fervent desire of neighboring barbarians to be brought into the client-state system. When some powerful tribes were refused, they responded by sacking Rome.

Posted by Jeff at April 10, 2004 10:07 PM | Link Cosmos