A recent war games scenario conducted by the U.S. Army War College has brought to light concerning shortcomings with the U.S.'s ability to recover nuclear weapons in a failed state. CNN's Jake Tapper recently reported on this startling development. The objective of the recent war game simulation was to neutralize or secure the nuclear arsenal of a country dubbed 'North Brownland' - a nick-name for North Korea. The characteristics North Brownland shared with North Korea are quite similar; a familial dictatorial authoritarian regime, proven WMD capability, bellicose and aggressive rhetoric, and the high potential to further deteriorate into an unstable failed state. However, it should be noted that other states share the traits and would also qualify as the intended target of this war game scenario, like the cases of Syria or Pakistan. [Click Here for the current list of Foreign Policy's Failed States]
The failures experienced by the U.S. in the war games scenario were not due to a lack of strategy, technological capability, or troop levels, but rather the inability to implement the current strategy for WMD recovery and wage a conventional war. To achieve mission success, the scenario yielded a conservative estimate of 90,000 troops over a period of 56 days. Paul McLeary, of Defense News, attended the analytic review of the war game. He summarized the issues discussed by Pentagon officials,
"They're very concerned about being able to get troops who can deal with nuclear and chemical weapons where they need them quickly. And the fact [is] that over the past ten or twelve years, they haven't really invested in that capability so much. They've invested in counterinsurgency, ground vehicles, IED threats, but they haven't really spent a lot of time and money modernizing their nuclear and chemical troops."
This realization is something that I have covered, in part, with the rise of USSOCOM. The switch from conventional warfare to counterinsurgency (COIN) operations was precipitated by two driving factors present in the conflicts that the U.S. has been involved in during the post-9/11 era. The first was a change in the nature of the opposition forces the U.S. faced. In 2007 during a speech at the Council on Foreign relations, General Michael Hayden stated that,
"The Soviet Union's most deadly forces - ICBMs, tank armies - they were actually relatively easy to find, but they were very hard to kill. Intelligence was important, don't get me wrong, but intelligence was overshadowed by the need for raw, shear fire power. Today the situation is reversed. We're now in an age in which our primary adversary is easy to kill, he's just very hard to find."
