Future Force Planning for the Middle East

Rear Admiral John F. Sigler

ith the Obama administration now in place, campaign promises are being kept and security strategies developed. The result over the next two years will be a significant realignment of U.S. military force posture in the Middle East. Forces will withdraw from Iraq according to a discrete timeline, and forces will be added to Afghanistan as part of a revised strategy to reverse recent Taliban gains in that nation. One strategic question, beyond the eventual outcomes in both places, is what the longer-term picture for U.S. forces will be. How many troops will be forward deployed in the region, where will they be, and for what purpose?

The posture of U.S. forces in the Middle East for the next ten to twenty years will be determined by what are essentially three considerations. The first is the enduring and evolving interests of the United States in the region, and possible challenges to them. The second is how military transformation (including issues of affordability) will affect U.S. troop basing and deployment. The third will be regional views of the United States, including the perceived contribution and impact of U.S. force presence.

The evolution of America’s Mideast presence

With the exception of the early nineteenth century Barbary Wars against North African pirates, U.S. military interests in the Middle East and particularly in the Arabian Gulf first emerged in the 1940s, just after President Franklin D. Roosevelt established a close relationship with King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud in February 1945. The end of World War II saw the United States turn from relative isolation to the acceptance of global leadership and commitments, including the rebuilding of the shattered nations and institutions of Europe and the Far East. In between lay the oil-rich lands of the Arabian Peninsula and Persia. The United States’ foremost post-war peer competitor, the Soviet Union, resided just to the north of the Gulf and saw the Gulf and the North Arabian Sea as potential strategic warm water points of access. And in 1948, the State of Israel was created on a narrow strip of land along the Levant. Cumulatively, these developments defined America’s interlocking post-war interests: preserving regional relationships, establishing a forward presence against Soviet encroachment, securing regional energy resources, and enforcing its commitment to the security of the fledgling state of Israel.

Representing those interests were U.S. diplomatic posts throughout the region, American corporate enterprises, especially in the energy sector, and a modest U.S. military presence, primarily naval in nature. In 1948, a number of U.S. naval task forces visited the Gulf to oversee the large number of Navy oilers and chartered tankers loading out and transporting Gulf oil. As the warships entered the Gulf, they became Task Force 126. By June 1949, the Task Force had become a continuous presence and was renamed the Persian Gulf Force. In August of that year the title was changed to the Middle East Force. The Middle East Force was a permanent command structure with a continuous presence of four to five ships, including a flagship and navy rear admiral in command. The admiral and his staff were the primary face of the U.S. military presence in the region, while the ambassadors and their embassies were the diplomatic face. Along with the defense attachés, Marine guards and security assistance officers1 assigned to the embassies, the U.S. military presence on a given day, over the next three decades, would vary from approximately 1,000 to 2,000 people.

Interestingly, these numbers did not vary appreciably during periods of regional instability such as the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948-9, 1956, 1967 and 1973-4. But the fall of the Shah of Iran in the late 1970s, and the ensuing 444-day hostage crisis, ushered in a new era, with U.S. military planners recognizing the need for a contingency force able to go quickly to any hot spot anywhere in the world. In response, the Carter administration established the Rapid Deployment Force (RDF). The RDF, however, was an ad hoc force, as well as primarily an Army command, and by 1980 two elements became clear to the Pentagon: the RDF needed to become a joint task force comprising units from all of the services, and its focus was increasingly becoming the Middle East. In 1980, the RDF became the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF), and by 1982 it was recognized that the RDJTF had become a de facto unified command.

At midnight on January 1, 1983, the United States Central Command was formally established, with contingency response and engagement responsibility for the Horn of Africa, the Middle East (excluding Israel, Syria and Lebanon, which remained in the European Command), Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Command has expanded somewhat over the years, to include Lebanon, Syria and the five Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union.

Central Command’s structure departed from that of the other combatant commands in two important ways: the headquarters was not in its assigned region, but rather resided at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, and it had no permanently assigned forces. Its forces in case of contingency flowed from the United States as well as from other theaters. Central Command has been extremely busy; in its twenty-six years, it has had to respond to twenty-four significant contingencies, including two wars today in Iraq and Afghanistan. Additionally, it continuously engages with regional governments and forces in a wide range of activities termed “theater security cooperation.”

Post-Cold War engagements

The effect on U.S. force presence in the Middle East since the establishment of Central Command and its nearly continuous response to contingencies has been dramatic. From the 1,000-2,000 personnel “in theater” on any given day the numbers rose to 5,000 during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War and concurrent 1978-1989 Soviet war against the mujahideen in Afghanistan. These additional forces included an increased naval presence to help protect commercial shipping threatened by the Iran-Iraq war as well as some ground units to provide additional assurance to friendly regimes in the region.

Of course, the largest U.S. commitment to the region occurred in 1990, when Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait. Thus began Operation Desert Shield, the pre-combat phase designed to prepare for ejecting Iraq from Kuwait, while simultaneously protecting Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states from attack. The build-up of forces during Desert Shield resulted in 543,000 troops present in theater to fight the ensuing war, Desert Storm. An important element of Desert Shield/Storm (and that will likely be a factor in all future major contingencies) was the incorporation of a coalition force of 34 nations into the U.S. war plan. Desert Storm began on January 17, 1991, with a massive air campaign followed by a devastating 100-hour ground campaign that ended the war and the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait of February 27, 1991.

Following victory over Saddam Hussein’s regime, the United States and its coalition partners quickly and sharply reduced their force levels. In the case of the United States, however, the numbers did not return to pre-war levels, primarily due a continuing threat of additional adventurism by Saddam and a U.S. policy called “Dual Containment,” designed to keep both Iraq and Iran in check. A major element of dual containment was the enforcement, primarily by military forces, of a number of United Nations sanctions that had been imposed by the international community against both countries over the years.

The post-war U.S force levels settled down to 17,000-24,000 troops in the region on any given day. Of the four significant activities accounting for the bulk of these forces, three were dedicated to UN Security Council sanction enforcement: Operations Northern and Southern Watch (ONW/OSW) and Maritime Interception Operations (MIO). Northern and Southern Watch consisted of around-the-clock air patrols by land-based air forces of the U.S. and the UK as well as by carrier-based naval aircraft. Their primary mission was to enforce no-fly zones established by Security Council resolutions to prevent Iraqi government attacks on its Kurdish populations to the north and Shi’a populations to the south. They additionally provided real-time monitoring of troop movements and other activities of the Ba’athist regime. Coalition naval forces also closely monitored Gulf shipping and intercepted/inspected those vessels suspected of smuggling oil and goods from and to Iraq by the sanctions regime. The fourth major activity was an ongoing exercise with the armed forces of Kuwait, called Desert Spring, a brigade-sized operation of about 3,000 standing troops augmented by 2,000-3,000 rotationally deployed personnel. The dual purpose was to ensure high combat readiness by the Kuwaitis and to have a deterrent force in place against a possible repeat offensive by Saddam.

In addition to the above forces, America’s daily presence in the region included about 75 bilateral and multilateral exercises per year, enhanced security assistance activities, military-to-military personnel exchanges and the establishment of additional bilateral and multilateral security mechanisms such as demining and disaster response. One last feature of this period, which continues to this day and will be part of the future equation, was the pre-positioning afloat and at land-based sites of large stocks of military equipment and consumables. These stocks allow for far more rapid contingency response, as large numbers of troops can be quickly airlifted in to marry up with their equipment, the bulk of which would otherwise have to be shipped to theater over several weeks.

The 17,000-24,000 force level lasted through the 1990s with a slight bump upwards about once a year as Saddam would move troops in a threatening way or make a verbal threat that would cause coalition forces to increase their alert levels. Dual containment essentially ended as a policy in late 1998, when the U.S. declared that it would no longer put up with these provocations. The response, Operation Desert Fox, was a combined U.S.–UK operation against the Iraqi regime and weapons of mass destruction targets waged over a three-day period in December 1998, utilizing in-place forces.

The next major change in force levels came in 2001, following the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States. Since those attacks had, in part, been engineered by al-Qaeda leadership operating out of Taliban-governed Afghanistan, the United States first tried to negotiate al-Qaeda’s expulsion. When the Taliban refused to cooperate, and given the extraordinarily repressive nature of their regime, the decision was made to carry out Operation Enduring Freedom to root out terrorists and replace the regime there. A coalition force of about 20,000, including approximately 18,000 Americans, was involved in this effort. Additionally, 47,000 troops from 40 nations, including 17,000 more Americans, are now involved in stability operations under the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

The war in Afghanistan brought U.S. Middle East force levels up to about 55,000 troops. Soon thereafter, in March 2003, the United States and the UK, along with small contingents from several other nations, conducted Operation Iraqi Liberation [later renamed Operation Iraqi Freedom], designed primarily to overthrow the Ba’athist regime as a means of ending Saddam’s programs to develop weapons of mass destruction, including (it was thought) a major nuclear weapons program. Approximately 248,000 American soldiers and Marines, along with about 49,000 Coalition partners, were deployed to the Middle East to execute the operation. The actual invasion force was about 12,000 less, due to a Turkish decision not to let U.S. forces invade along a northern front via their territory. These two operations continue with total presence in the neighborhood of 300,000 since 2003. The so-called “surge” added about 30,000 in 2008; these forces, however, are in the process of being withdrawn.

In the near term, we can expect a steady withdrawal from Iraq of all U.S. and Coalition combat forces, to be completed within 16 to 22 months. About one-third to one-half of the current 140,000 troops will leave, with the remainder reassigned to training and support missions for an undetermined time into the future. Concurrently, there will be a build-up of combat forces in Afghanistan from the current level of approximately 35,000 to as many as 60,000. President Obama’s decisions concerning both the Iraq withdrawals and Afghanistan additions are reportedly pending.

Planning ahead

The question, then, is what happens next? What numbers are we likely to put in the last column when the bulk of troops and all but stabilization forces are withdrawn?

If instabilities do not rise to a level requiring a major U.S. or international response, we could assume that the United States will be able to return to a posture in the region similar to the one that characterized the 1940s through the 1970s. The unfortunate reality, however, is that the greater Middle East in recent decades has seen at least one (often several) major destabilizing event every decade, from the fall of the Shah of Iran to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Possible future contingencies that would result in an upward excursion from the baseline are—also unfortunately—numerous. Indeed, policymakers in the region and the United States should worry about at least seven potential scenarios:

The overthrow of one or more moderate regimes;

Major state failure in or adjacent to the region;

The proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction;

A regional environmental and/or humanitarian disaster;

A major terrorist attack in the region, or outside it but emanating from the Middle East;

Conflict arising from failure to establish a durable Middle East peace; and

Major-power conflict over energy resources.

While the probability of any one of these events (and others not listed) will occur is variable, history suggests the potential for at least one to take place in the next ten to twenty years is high. A recognition of this state of affairs plays a large part in how the U.S. structures its security capabilities in, and strategy toward, the region.

The United States’ Cold War military capabilities were characterized and shaped by peer competition with the Soviet Union. The ability to deter major global war and, should deterrence fail, prevail against a formidable but reasonably quantifiable adversary dictated U.S. force structure and posture for five decades. Although, thankfully, that war never occurred, U.S. forces fought in a number of lesser contingencies with the forces designed and postured for the global scenario. Following the demise of the Cold War, a predicted “peace dividend” evaporated as regional contingencies, perhaps no longer held in check by the superpower competition, became the order of the day. Central Command’s response in the last years of the Cold War and after, noted earlier, provides ample example of the emergent security environment. Force structure and posture also became a more complex equation, as forces were designed to deter and prevail against less quantifiable enemies.

Toward the end of the twentieth century, two major complications arose: state-sponsored transnational terrorism and non-state actors capable of significant conventional and unconventional warfare. The new reality became painfully evident when al-Qaeda operatives attacked the U.S. homeland in 2001. As a result, the challenge has become how to deal with a wide range of potential adversaries. What kind of capabilities are required now and beyond?

The United States used to postulate the advantage of asymmetric warfare as the ability of a large well-equipped, trained and connected force to prevail no matter what was thrown at it. In a tactical sense, that is usually still the case, but an element of the new environment is asymmetric strategy. The very cornerstone of U.S. military strategy—“deter, and should deterrence fail, prevail”—is being challenged. Prevail has always implied winning the nation’s wars. Now, and for some future period (likely to include twenty years or more) at least some of the adversaries the U.S. and its allies and friends may face do not need to win in combat to achieve their strategic objectives.

An additional challenge for defense policy has been the affordability of new weapons systems required to keep the asymmetric edge in a potential conflict. A good example is the unit cost of new naval vessels. In the late 1980s, the U.S. Navy came within two ships of a “six-hundred ship” fleet at less cost than that required to build a force of less than half that size today. And while the newer ships are far more capable than those they replaced, it is still true that a ship can only be in one place at one time—something that is particularly problematic in a diffuse security environment. In the same vein, the costs of equipment, personnel and operations have risen steeply for all of the services.

In response to these increased costs, as well as to the prevalence of a less identifiable enemy, the U.S. government has embarked upon a process of “military transformation.” All of the institutions of the Department of Defense—from business practices to force structure and employment—have come under scrutiny, as the United States attempts to build an affordable force that can protect the nation’s interests and can fight not only the next war, but those that will follow in an unpredictable future. Transformation can be characterized by an artful combination of both evolutionary and revolutionary approaches to the entire spectrum of Department of Defense operations in peace and war. Although it was closely associated with the Bush administration, in large part because of its public visibility during the tenure of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, military transformation is in truth an ongoing fact of life for the U.S. armed forces. The six goals currently enumerated for “transformation” are:

To protect the U.S. homeland and American bases overseas;

To project and sustain power in distant theaters;

To deny enemies sanctuary;

To protect U.S. information networks from attack;

To use information technology to link up different kinds of U.S. forces so they can fight jointly; and

To maintain unhindered access to space.2

In fulfillment of these objectives, forces are to be capable of projecting force over long distance, rapidly deployable, capable of fully integrated joint operations and capable of reaching distant theaters rapidly. At the same time, they are to be bolstered by improved intelligence, long-range precision strike capabilities, and sea-based platforms.3 A recurring theme in this view of transformation is that there will be far less forward basing in the future, and that U.S.-based forces will be given the tools to operate quickly anywhere in the world.

The requirements for transformation are also evolving. The June 2008 National Defense Strategy adds two key elements to the existing mission set of the U.S. armed forces. The first is the requirement for U.S. military capabilities to be seamlessly coordinated with the other agencies and elements of U.S. national power. The second is the recognition that the U.S. will need to coordinate its capabilities and activities with the international community of nations with intersecting interests.4

The bottom line

The central questions preoccupying U.S. military force planners are how these transformed forces will be postured in the Middle East ten to twenty years hence, what will their likely numbers be, where will they be located and what will they be doing?

The best answer is that, under the given assumptions, the period in question will look most like the years between Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Liberation. The enduring interests of that period—unfettered global access to energy resources and regional stability, including the security of Israel—will continue. A potential source of instability will be still young and relatively fragile democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Replacing the ongoing threat posed by Saddam Hussein will be that of sub-state actors like al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Hezbollah. Iran could continue on a slow pace of reform but, absent other externalities, will continue to compete for regional hegemony. Both China and India will be more actively engaged in the region as their growing economies demand greater energy resources. And although Pakistan is outside of the area, events in that nation will continue to influence the region.

During the 1990s, the four pillars of U.S. strategy were assuring our partners and friends of our support; dissuading friends and adversaries alike from behavior counter to stability; deterring enemies from attacking U.S. and friendly interests; and, should deterrence fail, prevailing in combat. While they may have somewhat different titles in the future, America’s goals are likely to be the same. The strategy will, however, be overlaid by transformation, which means that more of the troops dedicated to the pillars will be home-based in the United States, ready to deploy quickly. The so-called Long War against transnational terrorists and their support systems will continue.5 Forces similar in numbers to those dedicated to Operations Northern and Southern Watch, Exercise Desert Spring and Maritime Intercept Operations will be dedicated both to the long war and the important adjunct of that war: supporting the democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Strengthening the capabilities of potential coalition partners and the ability of U.S. forces to operate with them on short notice will require continuation of robust theater security cooperation programs. These will include a significant number of bilateral and multilateral exercises, security assistance in weapons systems and training, and military-to-military exchanges at all levels to ensure better understanding and interoperability. Collective security arrangements will be strengthened where possible (for example, in the form of shared early warning regimes and integrated missile defense systems).

Finally, although transformed U.S. forces will be able to strike and be rapidly deployable from long distances, ground forces will need to be able to have places to go and from which to operate beyond sea-basing. Further, heavy ground forces will need to have significant amounts of equipment and material pre-positioned either afloat or ashore. Based on the experience with Turkey during Operation Iraqi Liberation, access agreements will need to be diversified. A key approach to the access and basing challenge will be the negotiation for the establishment of significant numbers of “warm bases” throughout the region and in neighboring countries. These will be bases that will not have U.S. troops permanently assigned, beyond a small number of liaison officers, but which will be kept at, or are capable of being rapidly brought up to, U.S. standards for operations. Beyond contingency response, these warm bases should prove valuable for the host nation for their own forces, for exercise use and as a way to minimize the cultural impact of the stationing of foreign troops in their territory.

When all of the ongoing (e.g., stabilization forces) and rotational operational forces (for example, routine naval deployments), security assistance personnel, pre-positioning and warm-basing liaison personnel and a standing force joint headquarters are added up, the notional numbers of troops on a given day is approximately 12,000, dispersed throughout the Middle East.6 But such a number is simply an estimated baseline. If Middle Eastern history is any indication, wild card events will cause potentially major expansions in U.S. troop levels in the years ahead.

Rear Admiral (ret.) John F. Sigler retired in March 2000 from a thirty-four-year career as a Surface Warfare Officer in the U.S. Navy. During his career, he served in policy positions in every U.S. theater of operations, including North and South America, Europe, Northeast and Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean and Southwest Asia. During his final tour, Rear Admiral Sigler was the Plans and Policy Officer (J5) for the United States Central Command. He is currently a Distinguished Fellow at the National Defense University, and Deputy Director of its Near East-South Asia Strategic Studies Center.