Military Implications of the Past 30 Years for the Next 30 Years

It's a saying I cherish: "Learning begins with imitation." If we approach this saying from a military perspective, we see that it triggers two questions. The first question is: Who is your role model? The second question is: Who is your opponent? Because you have shaped and will shape your power structure in the light of these two questions.

After the Cold War, the world became unipolar. For this reason, in the last 30 years, many of the world's militaries have taken the US armed forces, the only military superpower, as a role model. It is a well-known fact that the US military has spent these 30 years absorbing the doctrines and practices of "asymmetric warfare". Whether we see it as a natural consequence of being unrivaled or as the most logical orientation of a constant search for an enemy, this process has profoundly affected and continues to affect the American force structure.

From the perspective of ground forces, the American war machine has two distinct mechanisms. The first is the conventional US Army. The other is the US Marine Corps, the main force on which the US relies in its global power projection. The behavioral model of this force, which is undergoing a process of change, which has been the guest of the Turkish defense press with the retirement of all main battle tanks, has not been dealt with comprehensively and in a coherence of meaning.

In this article, we will focus on the new way of doing war that the US Marine Corps will adopt in the near future. What are the reasons that led the United States to adopt this new concept of warfare? What are the implications of this concept? What lessons and interactions will other militaries learn from this way of fighting?

The land your infantry boots don't tread on is not yours!

After 30 years of asymmetric warfare with questionable success, the US has had to confront the presence of regular armies with industrial capacities such as China and Russia. These regular armies had not wasted time on asymmetric warfare like the US and continued to see the American war machine as a whole as their opponent. Against these two opponents, the Marine Corps had an advantage. It knew more clearly where and under what conditions it would fight its future war.

The foresight that it would be fighting against China in an extremely rich and vast geography in terms of islands was a prominent factor in the reorganization of the Marine Corps' force structure. Another factor was the predisposition and habit of asymmetric warfare. The combination of these two factors led the US Marine Corps to adopt an asymmetric approach against China. The goal was to create a force structure that was dispersed over a large geographical area, capable of striking an effective blow, adopting the doctrine of network-centric warfare, situational awareness, and a much lighter logistical burden.

Tanks would no longer be used to destroy enemy army tanks. Instead, more ATGM missiles would be employed. No more massive and layered air defense system structures would be used to destroy enemy aircraft. Instead, it would be replaced by mobile systems that would be more mobile, capable of engaging multiple types of targets with multiple types of ammunition, and providing the long vision needed from the network. No more naval forces would be deployed against the enemy navy. Instead, mobile coastal defense systems would be distributed all over the terrain, and an asymmetric balancing element would be established against the enemy in closed waters...

Moreover, these dispersed forces would have to lead many allied elements. It made much more sense to use these forces in the most effective way by dispersing them across the terrain than to invite their destruction around specific bases and foci. The approach decided to pursue in this context was this: To be a force that would be a cloud when striking and a fist when striking.

Creating a Force Structure with an Increased Proportion of Combat Personnel

Throughout history, one of the greatest challenges for the world's armies has been to support combat personnel. After all, a combatant is a human being; he needs to eat and regenerate constantly. He runs out of ammunition, needs various tools and needs treatment. This is why wars are unthinkable without logistics. Therefore, it is necessary to divide armies into two parts: the combat personnel who will face and defeat the enemy and the support personnel who will provide the necessary facilities to these combatants.

With the transition from the agricultural age to the industrial age, we see that the ratio of these support personnel has increased considerably. This is because the technology factor has turned the means of warfare into a highly complex mechanism and the maintenance and support needs of these machines have been added to the pot. With the information age, we observe that the need for support personnel has increased even more. A parallel development is the decline in the proportion of individuals willing to become soldiers in modern societies.

The US Marine Corps wants to provide an alternative to this trend as part of its future concepts. The employment of the AMT, for example, requires not only the personnel to operate the tank, but also a myriad of technical and logistical echelons to support it. You may choose to get rid of this expensive and heavy vehicle to acquire and operate. In this case, the budget you would save could be spent on acquiring more ATGM missiles. You would not need any support personnel other than to carry and use these missiles. The personnel you save will be filled by civilians, employed by the military-industrial complex in your safe homeland.

Could this approach of the US Marine Corps offer an alternative solution to the ever-increasing ratio of support personnel and increase combat personnel and therefore combat capability? I believe that we will see the validity of this way of thinking within a decade.

The Impact of the US Marine Corps' New Concept on its Allies

I think it would be correct to approach the issue from two different geographies. The first one is the Asia-Pacific front. When we look at this front, we see that Japan is renewing its entire military structure in line with this concept. The transition to a dispersed force structure based on islands and supported by long-range missiles continues rapidly. In the space between the islands, a different order is developing in which naval and air forces will cover the gap between the islands.

Other countries in the region, such as Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, have a clear awareness of the nature of the coming war. However, for a variety of reasons, not least budgetary and corruption, they have not adopted the US model in the process of change and transformation, but their own national line. The influence of external powers on this line seems to be a bit more difficult.

Countries such as South Korea and Vietnam, on the other hand, remain in the second plan in terms of conceptual transformation because they have large land borders directly with their adversaries. Australia, on the other hand, as a logistics center and a value-adding country in naval warfare, is closely following the process, but is engaged in different efforts for its own specific purpose in terms of transformation.

This End of the World

There is only one non-regional country in the entire globe that has been transformed by the US Marine Corps Concept: Greece. This transformation is being carried out with a specific target of Turkey in mind. The most obvious beginning of this transformation process was the appointment of an officer with a special forces background to the post of Chief of General Staff for the first time in Greek military history. I am of the opinion that the real reason behind the change in the military structure of the Greek armed forces in the Sea of Islands has been overlooked.

The readiness of Greece, which is changing its force structure for a specific purpose, will be largely complete by 2024. The speed of this change is due to the fact that the Sea of Islands is already largely under Greek control. In addition, the US base in Alexandroupoli is expected to provide the Greek peninsula with a certain level of confidence against ground operations. It is clear that the logistics to support the increased combat ratio will be provided by the military-industrial complexes of the allied countries, particularly the US, France and Israel.

For this reason, Greece is strengthening its belief that the planned Turkish-Greek war will take place in the Sea of Islands. It will seek victory in this war by inflicting irreplaceable damage on its adversary with its air and naval forces. This is in contrast to the Turkish public opinion that Greece wants a short war. Greece seeks a war that will last longer than the Turkish assumptions and prejudices, and is preparing for it with the American naval approach to warfare.

On the other side of this preparation is a land force in the west that envisages regular army warfare and is massed in Thrace. The realization that the majority of the soldiers of these forces are from the eastern part of the country and are of Kurdish origin. The fact that all the elite forces of the Turkish army are experienced in asymmetric warfare and that these forces can be melted down in the Aegean islands. The belief that the TSK can never focus on one front. The assumption that TCG Anadolu and other large landing ships will become easy targets when forced to operate in the sea of islands.

Geography of the Three Experiments

The US, which has been involved on both fronts of asymmetric warfare since Vietnam, has conducted three separate experiments in light of its intensified activities in this field in the last 30 years. The first of these experiments was the invention of ISIS (Daesh) as a fully asymmetric force. This force, which is fully under American and Israeli control from its concept to its functioning, was tested by fire against the countries of the region. After successfully fulfilling its mission, it was put to sleep.

The second experiment was the dispersed Kurdish presence in Iraq and Syria, which started as an asymmetric force and expanded to symmetric combat elements, creating a hybrid force structure. By making use of the PKK and other established organizations, this force was created in the region. In this process, in which the Kurds were used as a pawn, Turkey's national interests were openly threatened. The shortcomings (social, cultural, economic, historical, etc. etc.) of this entity, on which a grand plan was built, were tried to be covered with the direct presence and flag of the United States.

The Ukrainian war, which we all witnessed day by day, was the third element that tested the use of the new asymmetric approach in a full-scale regular inter-army war. The data gathered in this war was of great value for a possible new form of war between the US Marines and China. In the light of these three experiments, which the United States considered successful and useful, the new method of warfare to be adopted on the Asia-Pacific front gained a certain clarity. Parallel to this clarity, the possibility of opening a fourth field of experimentation is an issue that today's Turkey should pay attention to.

Conclusion

The abrupt US withdrawal from Afghanistan was perceived as a major defeat. But we see that this withdrawal left no American hostages in Russia's sphere of influence and reach in the Ukraine war. Moreover, the equipment left to the Taliban has given this tribal-minded force a mad courage against both Pakistan and Iran. As a result, there is a deep gulf between what the commentators of today say and what the historians of the future will say. What is seen as coincidence today and passed over without a second thought may turn out to be part of a plan in the future. For this reason, the subject of this article should be examined with extra care and attention in terms of Turkey's future.

In particular, our Naval Forces, since it also includes naval infantry under its organizational umbrella, must take into account the transformation and change of the forces it faces. A country that is engaged in long-term goals and costly efforts to create its own defense and aerospace industry may be tested with a different way of handling war. In this way, the countries behind the scenes may want to send a message to the world that you will no longer have any other way but to buy our weapons. As we move into the information age, this message will have the potential to carry a Trojan horse at an unprecedented rate.