The Economist 04Apr2020

34 United States The EconomistApril 4th 2020

T

he officialhymn of the United States

Marine Corps, a jaunty tune written by

Jacques Offenbach in 1867, proudly de-

clares that “From the Halls of Montezuma/

To the shores of Tripoli/ We fight our coun-

try’s battles/ In the air, on land, and sea”.

But despite their naval origins and ethos,

America’s marines have spent most of the

past two decades waging war in the deserts,

mountains and cities of Iraq and Afghani-

stan. On March 26th General David Berger,

the corps’s commandant, proposed a radi-

cal transformation of the force into Ameri-

ca’s first line of defence in the Pacific.

The Marine Corps emerged out of the

Continental Marines, the naval infantry

force raised in 1775 by the American colo-

nies during the revolutionary war against

Britain. As soldiers who were deployed at

sea, they served as raiding parties and an

insurance policy against mutiny by press-

ganged sailors. Over the next century they

acquired a legendary reputation for far-

flung campaigns.

The marines’ publicity bureau, estab-

lished before the first world war, carefully

cultivated an image of an elite force with a

macho, Spartan streak. That reputation

was bolstered by their starring role in the

brutal island-hopping battles against Ja-

pan during the second world war.

The image of seafaring, beach-storming

warriors blurred after the terrorist attacks

of September 11th 2001, when the marines

turned from a naval strike force into a du-

plicate army tasked with weeding out in-

surgents in grinding land campaigns. The

result, says Mark Folse of the usNaval

Academy, who served as an enlisted ma-

rine in Iraq and Afghanistan, is “an entire

generation of marines who have little to no

experience of the navy.”

Then the wheels of American strategy

turned again. In 2018 the Pentagon pub-

lished a new national defence strategy

which declared that “great power competi-

tion” with Russia and China would be the

priority. A series of war games showed that

China’s precision missiles would make it

much harder for America to fight its way

into the western Pacific, says General

Berger. On becoming commandant in July,

he published guidance calling for radical

change. “Visions of a massed naval armada

nine nautical miles offshore in the South

China Sea preparing to launch the landing

force...are impractical and unreasonable,”

he warned. Junior marine officers, writing

in War on the Rocks, a website, pressed

their superiors for change.

The ten-year “force design” released last

week offers it. It is at once a return to the

corps’s naval roots, and a drastic revamp. It

aims to cut the corps down to 170,000 per-

sonnel while slashing artillery and aircraft,

with the number of f-35 jets falling by over

a third. Most drastically, marines will get

rid of all their tanks. In their place comes a

commando-like infantry force with nim-

bler weapons: drone squadrons will double

in number and rocket batteries will triple.

The idea is that in a war with China,

America’s hulking aircraft carriers might

be pushed far out to sea by the threat of

missiles. But groups of 50 to 150 marines,

wielding armed drones, rockets and anti-

ship missiles, could get up close, fanning

out on islands along and inside the chain

from Japan to the Philippines. Like a high-

tech echo of the insurgents they once

fought, they would jump from one make-

shift base to another every couple of days to

avoid being spotted and targeted, says Gen-

eral Berger. They could identify targets for

more distant ships and warplanes, or pep-

per the Chinese fleet with fire them-

selves—dispersed, island-hopping warfare

to stop any attack in its tracks.

Some worry that this would be a dra-

matic change for a service that has proudly

served as a jack-of-all-trades for presidents

in a pinch. Seven hundred marines have

been stationed in Norway since 2018 and in

January thousands were hurriedly sent to

the Middle East amid tensions with Iran.

“The marines used to lean towards ver-

satility as a virtue, covering many middle

threats,” says Frank Hoffman of the Nation-

al Defence University. “This force design is

optimised for deterrence in one location.

It’s not a force for Donbas, Lebanon or Syr-

ia.” General Berger insists that is not so:

“We know we never choose the crisis.” Mis-

sile-toting commandos dotted around rug-

ged outposts would be “very applicable

anywhere”, he argues, from the Arctic to

the Strait of Hormuz.

Buy-in from the navy is especially im-

portant. The plan depends on tight integra-

tion with the marines’ sister service, not

least because the corps does not own its

own warships. The number of American

ships—the navy is set on 355—is less im-

portant, notes Chris Brose of Anduril In-

dustries, a former staff director for the Sen-

ate Armed Services Committee. Whether a

weapon is fired from a marine squad or

navy destroyer thousands of miles away is

irrelevant, he says, as long as they are inte-

grated and add up to a greater capability.

Congress will also take some persuad-

ing. “It won’t be Democrats versus Republi-

cans,” says Mike Gallagher, a Republican

congressman and former marine officer

who serves on the House Armed Services

Committee. “I think it will be entirely gen-

erational. The younger members, particu-

larly those who have served, are embracing

these changes, and are more than willing to

divest ourselves of legacy capabilities,

even at the cost to our own districts. The

older members...will be loth to embrace

change, particularly when it affects things

that are produced in their districts.” 7

The usMarine Corps sheds its tanks and returns to its naval roots

Military strategy

Send the marines

Into the blue again