Semper Fi: A Marine General Places a Big Bet on the Corps

Say this about General Berger of the Marine Corps. Whether you like the man or his plan, he certainly has vision — and guts. Against the opposition of the vast majority of retired Marine brass, and others, he is pressing a visionary plan for the future of warfare, and honing a cutting edge in it for the Corps. I got to know the general’s plan during my several years at the Pentagon, and, though I never met him, have followed him since. He isn’t mincing words. He isn’t hedging his bets. Nor is he stuck in endless theoretical planning. The man has conviction. He has sketched out a new strategy for the Corps. And he is moving out, fast. The Marines Corps is getting rid of its tanks. It has slashed cannons in favor of rockets and new cutting edge capabilities. It has cut infantry battalions and invested in greater marine capabilities. These are revolutionary steps, the kind of bets we only expect to see from the likes of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. To no one’s surprise, the Beltway has begun to push back. Although General Berger released the plan in 2020, and received praise from Congress and Pentagon leadership, a group of retired Marine generals has begun to push back. The latest is a coordinated campaign to convince Congress to put the kibosh on these changes. History will tell us if General Berger is a genius or a fool, but on one front, at the least — and perhaps the one that matters most — General Berger is right. Wars of the future will not be like those of the past, nor of the present. Our military needs to innovate and prepare for the future if it is to win. Enter General Berger. Our military has worried about how to defeat the Chinese military’s strategy to prevent us from operating in the Pacific. It is designed to stop us from threatening China and to prevent us from fulfilling our defense commitments to Taiwan or defense treaties with Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. China’s strategy, known as Anti Access Area Denial, or A2/AD, aims to prevent us from navigating in the waters around China, sea lanes through which the majority of the world’s goods flow. Giving the Chinese military control over these waters, to include the Strait of Malacca, would enable them to shut down global commerce.In short, it is an unacceptable outcome, an existential point of leverage we cannot concede. We must defeat A2/AD. Yet despite the stakes, little progress on that front was made around the Pentagon until General Berger arrived, and sketched out a plan. That plan involves decentralizing Marine forces and pushing down authority, making them quicker, more nimble, and more capable of operating independently. It means deploying groups small enough to evade Chinese sensors and arming them with powerful precision rockets to take out Chinese defenses so that larger military forces can sweep in. More broadly, General Berger’s plan aligns the way the Marine Corps organizes its troops with how it actually fights — its doctrine — with the kind of environment in which it fights. It focuses on modern adversaries, namely China and Russia. As one astute Marine colonel described it, we have a force that is built and organized the same way it was during the world wars, fighting with doctrine developed in the latter stages of the Cold War, while preparing to fight countries with next generation cyber, quantum, and hypersonic capabilities. In short, it’s all out of balance. General Berger’s plan recognizes that first and foremost, the Marine Corps needs to reorganize itself and the way it fights to align with the modern operating environment. Because, like it or not, our adversaries are the one thing we cannot control. General Berger’s critics are missing the forest for the trees. It’s not about the tanks, the cannons, and the aircraft numbers, which General Berger has changed dramatically. His overhaul is really about alignment, adapting to the present, and planning for the future. His detractors are certainly nervous, and for good reason, but that isn’t going to change the fact that the present and the future will not be like the past. General Berger may not have it all right. He does, though, have a vision to modernize our forces against the threats we will actually face — and the courage to make hard choices in a flat budget environmentOne can debate the particulars of any specific weapons decisions, but it’s harder to question the logic and humility of learning and experimenting. Sitting on our hands isn’t an option.

Semper Fi: A Marine General Places a Big Bet on the Corps

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