New Adaptive US National Military Strategy To Win America’s Wars
Joint Global Warfare Strike Operations “Lily Pads” (Deployment and Launch Operations) By
February 27, 2025
By
Paul E. Vallely (MG, US Army Ret)
Chairman of Stand Up America US Foundation
The Legacy National Security Advisory Group
While the Legacy National Security Advisory Group global strategy proposals in no way constitute U.S. government policy, consideration of future war planning is critical. The proposals seek to provide the United States Department of Defense, the National Command Authority, Congress and the Executive Branch an intellectual foundation upon which we will construct the concepts to guide our future military structure and global military strategy. The continuing change in strategic trends will provide the basis for a new adaptive military strategy that is guided by the Principles of War. These implications serve to influence the concepts that drive our Armed Forces adaptations to the threats and environments within which they will operate - adaptations that are essential to our Generals and Admirals decision- making when future crises and conflicts become a reality. Types of war historically have been land, sea and air and our forces were designed to execute all those warfighting strategy and tactics against those external threats. We now have air, land, sea, space, biological, and cyber.
In the guardian role for our nation, it is natural that we focus more on possible combat operational challenges and threats than we do on emerging opportunities. From economic trends to vulnerability and threats from within of illegal border crossing, enemies, gangs/cartels, Islamists/ISIS, cyber-attack and space warfare, to electromagnetic pulse (EMP), to nuclear attacks. We will outline those trends and threats to remind us that we must be vigilant to the changing world if we intend to maintain a dynamic and effective military. There is a strong note of urgency now in our efforts to balance and structure the Armed Forces for existing and future threats to the United States at home and abroad.
Some issues to consider:
There is a lot to criticize about America’s current military, but there’s another problem no one seems to want to talk about. It’s scary as hell. The United States is not ready for the kind of war we are seeing played out in Ukraine, a peer-to-peer conventional fight that is rewriting the rules of what we thought the war was supposed to be. And, with leadership in the White House sitting in a rocker staring slack-jawed at Matlock reruns, we cannot fix what will mean defeat in our next real war.
This is not solely about wokeness and how the officer corps has embraced the ridiculous shibboleths of the progressive left regarding race, gender, and the climate scam. Still, wokeness relates to the problem that the Ukraine War has revealed. When the leadership is focused on ridiculous frivolities like “white nationalism” and trans idiocy, it does not integrate the massive changes to how we fight that we need to compete on a modern battlefield.
And we do need massive changes. The old wisdom is that the military always fights the last war. Now, we’re trying to fight the last two wars. We are trying to reframe the conventional Cold War model that won the Gulf War while also fighting the counterinsurgencies of the Global War on Terror. What we are not preparing to fight is the kind of war we are seeing in Ukraine.
The Russo-Ukraine War is a test bed for new technologies overlaid over old styles of warfare, particularly the static, dug-in trench warfare of World War I. What is different? A lot. For one thing, electronic warfare (EW) is an enormous new factor. You know all those awesome precision-guided munitions we saw America use in Iraq and Afghanistan? We gave many of them to Ukraine. According to open-source reports – I do not know anything secret and would not write about it if I did – the Russians, who are very good at this sort of thing, have figured out how to use EW to defeat them. Remember, GPS is based on radio waves, which can be jammed, spoofed, or otherwise messed with. A missile that misses is useless. Imagine America going into a fight with its limited or ultimately defeated precision strike capabilities.[1]
Conservatives must lead a "restructuring" of the American military to embrace the possibility that war may be on the horizon. Too often, Americans hear a bipartisan chorus declaring the military a "melting pot" or "mirror" of civilian society. In this vein of rhetoric, the military's purpose is to reflect the country's demographic trends and be hospitable to the de rigueur conception of civil rights.
This reflects what Samuel Huntington described in The Soldier and the State as the tension between the military's "functional imperative" to fight and win our nation's wars and the "social imperative" to embrace the politics and ideologies of civil society. Huntington rightly argued that the military's adherence to its "functional imperative" demands absolute adherence to merit and to the people, policies, and programs that make it more lethal and effective.
1870-71, for example, the Germans defeated a French Army with an excellent reputation and tremendous resources. However, decades of politicized French high command officials left the army without competent leadership, and the nation suffered a humiliating defeat. This crisis of merit spurred a century-long cycle of French military losses.
Today's American military has fully embraced the social imperatives of the Left and the most progressive aspects of American society. This assumption is pernicious because the 20th-century armed forces that won two world wars were built on a theory of separation from society. William T. Sherman, Jack Pershing, and George Marshall formed a tradition of military leadership built on ruthless standards of military competence and near-indifference to political pressures and social concerns. These leaders created and led armies with global success, and we should recall their approach to civil-military relations in policymaking and oversight. Such scrutiny is appropriate, even for senior officers serving in uniform. By law, the U.S. Senate has the responsibility and authority to review every general and flag officer in the military up for promotion. This authority is entrusted to our elected leaders to ensure the best officers lead aircraft carriers, infantry divisions, and Marine Expeditionary Forces. Suppose the nation is to reclaim the military as an institution built for victory in war. In that case, conservatives must have the courage and audacity to reform the institution, starting at the top, with uniformed leadership.