How Americans Try to Forecast War

Accurately foreshadowing what is to come is a doomed enterprise. This should not be surprising, for the future is not preordained. Nevertheless, militaries, intelligence agencies, universities, defense companies, and think tanks across the globe are trying to just do that when it comes to the nature and characteristics of future wars. In particular in the United States, an influential and well-financed industry has emerged trying to predict tomorrow’s military conflicts.

Given that the United States is one of the world’s preeminent military powers, this is not surprising. It is the only major power that has been engaged in consecutive warfare since 2001 and it remains the world’s only nation with a global military presence. Ever since the end of the Cold War, the business of predicting the future of military conflict has ostensibly become more difficult. As then-CIA director James Woosely said in 1993: “We have slain a large dragon, but now we find ourselves in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes.”

When it comes to identifying “poisonous snakes” and their capabilities, as well as the likelihood of future military conflict, Bob Scales, a retired U.S. Army general, in his book Scales on War: The Future of America’s Military at Risk, identified five distinct analytical schools that have emerged in the United States to predict the time, place, cost, duration, intensity, and nature of future wars involving the U.S. Armed Forces.

Importantly, Scales notes that “the culture that spawned each school shapes the nature of the inquiry. The sum of the processes practiced by these schools exerts a subtle influence that inevitably identifies future threats more like the enemies we want to fight than the enemies we have fought consistently since the end of World War II.” The five schools are the “Scenario Development School,” the “Emerging Technology School,” the “Capabilities-Based Assessment School,” the “New Concepts Masquerading as Strategy School,” and the “Global Trends School.”

First, the “Scenario Development School” focuses on countries hostile to and in competition with the United States occupying geostrategically important territory and under what circumstances the United States would go to war with them. Since the 1990s, these countries have not changed in the eyes of U.S. analysts and policymakers: China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia. (Afghanistan, Iraq, al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State were and are still seen as outliers in that regard.)

The problem “with the scenario approach has been that, try as the pundits might (and they really try – particularly at budget time), they have not been able to elevate the overt intentions of these actors to a level approaching imminent danger,” Scales writes. His critique incidentally resembles criticism expressed in the 1970s movie Three Days of the Condor. “Boy, have you found a home,” replies Robert Redford sarcastically, after a CIA agent tried to argue about the necessity of playing out hypothetical and highly improbable worst-case scenarios.

Second, the “Emerging Technology School” posits that future enemies could acquire superior technologies, nullifying U.S. military superiority and ultimately leading to defeat. This is a particular obsession of a subgroup of China analysts. Superior Chinese asymmetrical capabilities (e.g., precision-guided missiles and strategic cyber weapons) could prevent U.S. forces from defending regional allies in Asia. This concern is paired with a deeply culturally ingrained fear of a Pearl Harbor-like surprise attack.

Yet, according to Scales, “too often, the technological fear mongering has led to a ‘Chicken Little’ effect that has proven both illusory and very expensive. Technological fear mongering comes from cultural arrogance that assumes our enemies put the same trust in technology that we do.” Rarely have American troops been surprised by new technologies or superweapons. Rather, they were challenged by enemies “who have employed simple technologies creatively.”

Third, the “Capabilities-Based Assessment School” assumes that it is impossible to accurately predict future threats. Consequently, the U.S. Armed Forces have to be prepared for any eventuality. “Security comes from creating a huge military toolbox from which weapons and force can be retrieved and tailored to meet unforeseen threats.” The Boy Scout logic behind this idea (“Be prepared”) appears to be sound.  It also resembles best the current attitude of senior U.S. military leaders.

The consequences in real life, however, are that military planners will likely miss the forest for the trees. It would be hugely expensive to acquire and maintain cutting-edge capabilities in order to be be equally well-prepared for any potential future threat, no matter how farfetched. It would also make prioritizing threats more difficult. The U.S. military’s ostensible ability to deal with any future threat can also have a negative impact on shaping U.S. foreign policy and can lead to so-called mission creep, as U.S. experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last two decades have shown.

Fourth, Scales, as a former military officer, reserves his biggest vitriol for the “New Concepts Masquerading as Strategy School.” It presents a new warfighting concept (e.g., “shock and awe,” “effects-based operations,” or “Air-Sea battle” aka “Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons”) as a war winning strategy. In its essence, it is “premised on the ridiculous idea that U.S. killing technologies would prevail against any enemy,” Scales writes.

Proponents of this school have repeatedly argued that advanced U.S. military technologies can fundamentally alter the nature of future conflict by, for example, lifting the axiomatic “fog of war.” The school centers around the idea that advanced intelligence capabilities paired with superior firepower can rapidly defeat an opponent (primarily via air power). Yet, it disregards historical examples where overwhelming fire power has not resulted in military victory. It also offers little strategic insights into any enemy’s thinking. 

As the military historian Tom Ricks noted in 2015, when asked about the future of war: “The most neglected area, I think, is the huge difference between possessing firepower and knowing how, where, when, and why to use it.” This requires above all a deep understanding of the enemy derived from accurate intelligence assessments. The “New Concepts Masquerading as Strategy School” does shed additional insights into this patently overlooked part of the future of war.

Fifth, the “Global Trends School” tries to assess worldwide forces and choices that could eventually constitute clear and present threats to U.S. national security. Special attention is paid to political, social, and most importantly environmental concerns. This can include the rise of populism, anti-modernist forces in the Islamic world, the growing power of authoritarian regimes, urbanization, diminishing water supplies, global epidemics, and climate change.

While all of these trends are important and will most certainly have an impact on shaping the future, the causal relationship between some of these phenomena and war is less than clear. For example, while there is a correlation between rising global temperatures and war, the causal connection is murky. In other words, climate change can be a contributing factor to conflict, but it mostly likely will not be the deciding factor determining the outbreak of conflict. Indeed, Scales claims that “never in the written history of warfare, from Megiddo in 1,500 BC to the Syrian civil war today, is there any evidence that wars are caused by warmer air.”

One can certainly debate the cogency of Scales’ analytical framework outlined above. Yet, his major point that U.S. analysis tends to focus on those threats and enemies that the U.S. military wants to fight rather than it will likely face appears to be a valid one and is supported by the history of U.S. warfare in the 20th century.

Interestingly, for The Diplomat readers, Scales argues that U.S. analyses of future military conflict with China touches four out of the five analytical schools: “[T]he technologists warn of Chinese missiles capable of killing our aircraft carriers; the scenario makers love to anticipate crushing the new Chinese navy in a great sea battle; and the concept theorists are thrilled with chance to showcase U.S. weaponry as the best tools for confronting nascent Chinese expansionism.” One could add growing global power of authoritarianism, spearheaded by Beijing, to supplement Scale’s argument and to illustrate that China indeed touches all five schools.

Yet, Scales is skeptical of any future military confrontation with China. He sees no strategic reason for the two countries to go to war with one another. In a somewhat reductionist tenor he states: “There is no logical, strategic reason for the United States to bomb a major power to achieve any end other than national survival.”  He also notes the presence of nuclear weapons as a mitigating factor. Also, despite beliefs to the contrary there are limits to U.S. military power: “There are two countries on the planet that are unconquerable: China and Russia.”

As I said in a previous article for The Diplomat, many U.S. analysts suffer from a “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade” attitude when it comes to analyzing future warfare with China.  In order words, most U.S. future war analysis says much more about how the U.S. military and its analysts envision what a future confrontation with China ought to look like from an American perspective, rather than examining the most likely scenario based on a deeper understanding of Chinese intentions and interests.

Of course, this assessment can be applied to any other potential future adversary of the United States. To underline this important insight, Scale’s five analytical schools alone are a useful tool.

In the short and long run, figuring out adversaries’ interests and intentions and accurately factoring them in when predicting the nature and characteristic of future wars will remain a major problem for U.S. policymakers.