The Dilemma of Forward Deployment

In the second half of 1941, both the United States and the United Kingdom experimented with the idea of forward deployment for deterrent purposes. The United States dispatched the battleships and aircraft carriers of the Pacific Fleet from San Diego to Pearl Harbor, where facilities remained unfinished and unready to support the flotilla. The United Kingdom, under desperate pressure in the North Sea, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean, nevertheless managed to spare for Singapore one of the Royal Navy’s fast, modern battleships, one of its two remaining battlecruisers, a couple of aircraft carriers, and several older battleships.

Both countries sought to deter a Japanese attack into Southeast Asia or, failing that, to support a rigorous response. Both failed. By mid-morning on December 7, 1941, five of the nine battleships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet lay at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. Three days later, land-based Japanese aircraft would sink HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales, until that point the most powerful single surface warship in the Pacific. The old, slow battleships of the Far East fleet escaped, eventually finding themselves on the east coast of Africa.

Forward deployment has become an important concept in U.S. military circles over the last couple of decades. It serves several purposes, including rapid reaction, the establishment of political presence, and intelligence collection. The concept’s most notable contribution, however, lies in the realm of strategic deterrence. The dilemma of forward deployment is that in order to deter a strategic competitor, a state must convey sufficient seriousness of purpose without leaving the chin exposed. Forces too far forward risk inviting enemy attack, with potentially devastating implications for the chance of victory. Forces too far back risk conveying uncertainty about intentions and capabilities. The dilemma was familiar to strategic planners in 1941, and was revisited by Thomas C. Schelling, among others, during the nuclear age.

At one point, air forces represented a relatively cheap commitment. Fighter and bomber aircraft were expensive, but not nearly as expensive (or difficult to replace) as warships. Today, of course, every fighter plane represents a tremendous investment of technology and national treasure; destroying six F-35s at an advance airbase would amount to nearly a billion dollars worth of damage, depending on calculations.

Ghost Fleet, by August Cole and Peter Singer, conveys this dilemma nicely. In the novel, forward deployed U.S. air and naval assets come under attack from Russian and Chinese forces, suffering nearly total destruction. Of course, in the case of Ghost Fleet, “forward deployed” includes Pearl Harbor, but then the Japanese felt the same way about U.S. naval installations in the Pacific. And given the size and nature of the modern defense-industrial base, the prospect for replacement of front-line losses requires a very long war.

Alliance politics and a commitment to maintaining regional stability complicate the problem. Allies, whether formal or informal, like to see tangible evidence of commitment. This means ships sailing near their waters, and warplanes flying in or near their skies. Conserving force in anticipation of retaliation doesn’t help countries that have absorbed the first blow. And the U.S. commitment to maintaining the security of the maritime sphere means that many U.S. ships are always forward deployed, conducting diplomacy, anti-piracy operations, training, and humanitarian assistance.

Archipelagic Defense

To resolve some of these problems, Andrew Krepinevich has proposed archipelagic defense, with a renewed emphasis on the ability of land forces to defeat or deter a Chinese advance into the first and second island chains. The U.S. Army, with allied support, could contribute air defense, sea defense, and even submarine defense installations that would ramp up the cost to China, without offering a set of easily destroyed, extremely expensive targets for the missiles of the PLA. Krepinevich also suggests that land forces could retake control of any islands that the PLA manages to seize. This has the benefit of concentrating on retaliatory capacity, while also maintaining a front-line deterrent that won’t tempt a first strike.

Krepinevich’s formulation answers some of the questions associated with the problem of forward deployment, but complications remain. The United States needs the support of allies in order to pull off this kind of strategy, and allied military forces will undoubtedly come under Chinese attack in a conflict scenario. Land-based commitments are inherently less flexible, in diplomatic terms, than their air and naval counterparts.

In 1941, the United States and the United Kingdom were lucky to lose ships that they didn’t need; beyond the Prince of Wales and the Repulse, few of the ships lost would have played decisive roles in the Pacific War in any case. While it’s difficult to say precisely how the United States and China would conduct conflict (Ghost Fleet is only one guess), the U.S. will necessarily face some difficult decisions regarding crisis management and forward deterrence.

The United States needs to anticipate that China will strike the first blow in any conflict. The key U.S. decisions in the run-up to the crisis will involve precisely what assets it can leave at risk, while also trying to affect China’s decision-making and the calculations of regional states. At the same time, the U.S. needs to be wary of giving up the benefits that come with forward deployment, including the ability to rapidly respond to unanticipated regional crises.