USCENTCOM and the Future: Establishing the Right Strategic Priorities
Anthony Cordesman

November 20, 2008

The U.S. must do more than find solutions to dealing with its withdrawal from Iraq, and finding ways to reverse the course of the Afghan conflict. It needs to rethink the overall structure of its military posture and strategy in the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia. This requires the U.S. to address its diplomatic and aid efforts as part of a broad approach to the region, but it also requires a new focus for USCENTCOM and significant changes in the way the US approaches the entire area of operations.

The Burke Chair has developed a summary briefing on what these changes should be, and the key areas that the new Administration and USCENTCOM commanders should examine. This briefing is entitled "USCENTCOM and the Future: Establishing the Right Strategic Priorities" and is available on the CSIS web site at:
http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/081117_uscentcompres.pdf  

The brief highlights several obvious priorities: the need to create successful political accommodation and create a stable and secure Iraq, the need to win the Afghan-Pakistan conflict, and the need to deal with the challenge posed by Iran.

The briefing also suggests, however, that the U.S. has broader goals. It must seek a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace with the grim understanding that it may not be successful in the near term. It must recast its approach to the war on terrorism to strengthen cooperation with regional states, while also correcting the widespread impression in the region that the U.S. is anti-Arab and anti-Muslim, and sees reform more as a way of creating friendly regimes than of helping local governments and reformers address the underlying causes of terrorism.

The U.S. must broaden its efforts to focus on energy security on a pragmatic basis, understanding that politics may call for "energy independence" but that U.S. dependence on the global economy and real-world U.S. energy needs mean that the U.S. will remain strategically dependent on Gulf petroleum exports for the foreseeable future. 

At the same time, the U.S. needs to put far more emphasis on military to military engagement with friendly states in the region, build-up local partners to provide defense and counterterrorism capabilities, and reduce its forward military presence as it withdraws from Iraq. It also needs to be careful not to become overcommitted in Central and South Asia and to avoid being drawn into a 21st Century "great game" and the rivalry between India and Pakistan.

Other recent studies address these issues in more depth:

Iraq:

• "The Iraq War: Progress in the Fighting and Security"

• "How Soon is Safe? Iraqi Force Development and Conditions-based U.S. Withdrawals"

• "US Casualties: The Trends in Iraq and Afghanistan"

• "Sadr and the Mahdi Army: Evolution, Capabilities, and a New Direction"

• "Conditions-Based U.S. Withdrawals from Iraq"

• "Transferring Provinces to Iraqi Control: The Reality and the Risks"

Afghanistan:

• "Losing The Afghan-Pakistan War? The Rising Threat"

• "Winning the War in Afghanistan: The Realities of 2009"

• "Covering the Afghan-Pakistan War"

• "US Security Interests After Musharraf"

• "Follow the Money: Why the U.S. is Losing the War in Afghanistan"

• "Losing The Afghan-Pakistan War? The Rising Threat"

Iran:

• "Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction - Iran's Nuclear Weapons Program: Work in Progress"

• "Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction: Biological Weapons Programs"

• "Iranian Weapons of Mass Destrution: Chemical Weapons Programs"

• "Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction: Missile arsenal and other Delivery Systems"

• "The US, Israel, the Arab States and a Nuclear Iran"

The Gulf:

• "Security Cooperation in the Gulf: Actions --Rather than Words and Good Intentions"

• "Conventional Armed Forces in the Gulf"

Israel:

• "The Israeli and Syrian Conventional Military Balance"

• "Israeli Weapons of Mass Destruction"

Lessons of War:

• "The New Presidency and the Future of American Military Power"

• "Stability Operations: The Lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan"

This briefing is entitled "USCENTCOM and the Future: Establishing the Right Strategic Priorities," and is available on the CSIS web site.

About Anthony Cordesman

Dr. Anthony H. Cordesman holds the Arleigh Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and is Co-Director of the Center's Middle East Program. He is also a military analyst for ABC and a Professor of National Security Studies at Georgetown. He directs the assessment of global military balance, strategic energy developments, and CSIS' Dynamic Net Assessment of the Middle East. He is the author of books on the military lessons of the Iran-Iraq war as well as the Arab-Israeli military balance and the peace process, a six-volume net assessment of the Gulf, transnational threats, and military developments in Iran and Iraq. He analyzes U.S. strategy and force plans, counter-proliferation issues, arms transfers, Middle Eastern security, economic, and energy issues.  [Click here for more]

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