The Pivot to Asia.

• Author: Jones, David T.
• Position: American diplomacy in Asia

The Pivot to Asia

By Robert Work, Deputy Secretary of Defense

Text: http://www.cfr.org/defense-and-security/deputy-secretary-defense-robertwork-asia-pacific-rebalance/p33538

On 30 September, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work addressed the Council on Foreign Relations regarding U.S. defense planning, notably the projected "pivot" to Asia but more generally U.S. global strategy.

Work was not the soul of brevity; his address ran to almost 4,500 words and was well-larded with choke-a-horse sentences presumably straight from JCS crafting by individuals that had forgotten how to write a five-paragraph field order.

Thus, in describing the ongoing U.S. military strategy/forces objectives:

"It's the deliberate apportionment and global positioning of our forward stationed and our forward deployed forces and the development of supporting global attack, global mobility and logistics, forcible entry, command, control, communications, and intelligence forces, and the supporting security relationships and legal agreements that we make in order to facilitate the rapid concentration of forces in time and space across transoceanic distances."

In a way, "that says it all." Essentially, the U.S. is struggling in a period of reduced budgets (and Work railed against sequestration as "utterly stupid and totally irresponsible") to design a force structure to counter a global threat environment. We are long past the time when we could fight two major conflicts and have reserves available for a third contingency. (".simply no longer sustainable. Period. End of story.")

Today's effort is to design a mix of locally forward-deployed forces and quickly available reserves ("surge forces") that can be moved at transcontinental distances to reinforce deployed forces.y For the United States, "it is vital to allow us to have a favorable strategic...