Colonel Patrick Sullivan’s article, “Staff Jobs and Officer Education: An Army Ghost Story,” caught me by utter surprise. I was putting the finishing touches on this article when I scanned the Modern War Institute’s website for the latest content and saw it. Sipping coffee on my back lanai in the quiet morning hours in the hills above Pearl Harbor, I gasped aloud when I read the title of Sullivan’s piece. To my astonishment, he had written about an obscure—but evocative—forty-year-old memo that holds special meaning to me. The memo described the ideal qualities of someone who would occupy a proposed new role, working directly for a senior leader with the innocuous title of “special assistant” but who, the document’s author declared, was “not an aide—ever.”
A strategist by trade, I recently vacated an assignment that I held for nearly three years where I worked directly for the commanding general of US Army Pacific and often struggled to describe my role as a so-called special assistant. I typically fumbled through a menu of duties I felt were appropriate to share and held back on others more confidential in nature. I eventually grew unsatisfied with my wandering explanations, so I found it easier to say I was like an aide-de-camp. When I first came across the ghost memo about a year after I started in the job, I realized that mine was not like any official position on the books. It clarified that I was the commander’s “alter ego.” I was a ghost.
The unique experience offered me a front-row seat to the immensely complex and increasingly tumultuous security environment involving China. I routinely sat in meetings with senior officials from across our government and numerous partner nations. I gained a deep appreciation for the role of land forces in a region that many—even in my own ranks—find unfamiliar. In addition, I read and wrote extensively on these matters. Overall, my experience as a ghost convinced me, despite the obstacles like my service’s Eurocentrism and other competing demands, that the US Army must prioritize requirements for the Indo-Pacific first.
Encounters with History
While I did not meet all criteria for a ghost—I don’t speak a foreign language nor am I an artilleryman (included in the memo as a playful nod to the memo’s recipient)—I definitely met the requirement that a ghost travels. Traveling throughout the Indo-Pacific allowed me to better comprehend the region’s characteristics, including its vast distances, harsh climates, and maritime geography. I also became well acquainted with its characters, namely the other services in the joint force, allies and partners, and potential adversaries.
On the margins of my official duties, while traveling, I had several incredible encounters with the region’s military history. I visited the infamous Hoa Lo Prison, better known as the Hanoi Hilton, in Vietnam. I briefly laid over in Chuuk, a tiny remote island in Micronesia heavily garrisoned during World War II (when it was known as Truk). I walked through the solemn Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, viewed a gripping exhibit on Gallipoli in Wellington, and visited the splendid Australian War Memorial in Canberra. However, two encounters palpably stand out: one in the Philippines and the other in Singapore.
During a visit to Corregidor, an island fortress strategically located at the entrance to Manila Bay, I viewed rows of bombed out structures, climbed atop destroyed fortifications, and walked through the eerie corridors of the Malinta Tunnel. The “Rock” is, of course, where Army forces made their last stand against a relentless onslaught by the Japanese from December 1941 to May 1942. The campaign included horrific events like the Bataan Death March and resulted in twenty-three thousand Americans and one hundred thousand Filipinos killed or captured—the worst defeat in US military history.
In Singapore after a long flight and day of meetings, I convinced my understandably reluctant boss to join me on a detour to a museum known as the Former Ford Factory. There, British Commonwealth forces surrendered to the Japanese in February 1942 following their disastrous Malayan Campaign. In conversations with my colleagues, few knew about this catastrophe (which occurred in parallel to events unfolding in the Philippines) or that the British Commonwealth lost upwards of 130,000 troops in the fall of Singapore. It was “the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history,” according to Winston Churchill.
What piqued my interest in both cases was how armies figured centrally in the tragic outcomes in a theater where many—then and now—view seapower and airpower as premier capabilities. Notably, the naval and air elements were crippled in the opening stages of each campaign, leaving ground forces virtually isolated without support, resupply, or relief. Things quickly devolved into a battle for survival. Beforehand, troops rarely trained in local conditions and were not properly equipped to fight in jungle terrain. They lacked knowledge of their enemy, coordinated ineffectively with naval and air forces, and were poorly organized. In sum, the armies were grossly unprepared to fight in the region’s exacting conditions and against a determined enemy.
The key point I came to appreciate was how these catastrophes were not simply the results of battlefield actions or even more proximate strategic developments. The outcomes were decades in the making. The culpability largely came to rest on the shoulders of the local commanders, yet years of decisions in Washington and London over matters like manning, equipping, and resourcing indeed had much to do with the result. These two episodes naturally influenced my thinking about present-day challenges.
Transforming for What?
Considering the US Army is undergoing its largest transformation in nearly half a century, senior leaders are thoughtfully wrestling with the drivers and characteristics of force development and design. In other words, how, where, and against whom is the Army being built to fight? The Army’s focus was straightforward during the Cold War, but these days multiple threats along many blurred axes complicate matters. Further, flat budgets, recruiting woes, and shrinking end-strength for the nation’s land force are prompting many tough calls for Army senior leaders.
Influential voices in the Army argue for the service’s continued orientation toward Europe, with some suggesting the chief of staff of the Army “should act boldly, with the wisdom of his predecessor [General George C. Marshall], and focus the Army on Europe first.” But this argument is based on a glaring historical misinterpretation. Marshall recognized that Germany was the more dangerous threat over Japan. Today China wields greater political influence, possesses more economic and military capacity—including the world’s largest standing army—and overall poses a graver threat to US national interests than Russia. Plus, the geostrategic center of gravity is no longer in Europe, but in Asia. Arguments in favor of prioritizing Europe over the Info-Pacific thus ignore Marshall’s very rationale.
The Army’s unfunded requirements for the Indo-Pacific, despite the “priority theater” labeling by the Department of Defense, routinely exceed hundreds of millions of dollars each year. According to the Army’s latest budget request, base funding to support NATO is over a third larger (by a magnitude of $164 million) than the Army’s campaigning activities that underwrite deterrence against China and assurance of Indo-Pacific allies and partners. Furthermore, Army forces in Europe benefit from billions in supplemental funding, while those in the Pacific do not, because the Pacific Deterrence Initiative is not a separate funding source like the European Deterrence Initiative. As the business magnate (and Pacific war veteran) James W. Frick aptly stated: “Don’t tell me where your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money, and I’ll tell you what they are.”
To be fair, the Army has considerably increased investments for campaigning in the Indo-Pacific from a relatively scant $125 million just a few years ago to $461 million for fiscal year 2025. Other gains include the establishment of a regional combat training center—the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center—and the assignment of new formations like multi-domain task forces to the region. The Army is increasingly emphasizing aspects of a China fight in its professional military education, doctrinal publications, and training at multiple echelons to include a new service-wide Unified Pacific wargame and Pacific-focused operational exercises for forces based in the continental United States. But this momentum must lead to a new end.
Institutional Friction
Several obstacles inhibit the Army from making urgently needed changes to achieve its missions in the Indo-Pacific. First, arguments in favor of prioritizing Europe at the expense of commitments in the Indo-Pacific reflect the Army’s institutional bias for the familiar continental landscapes and traditional land warfare missions in the former, rather than the noncontiguous geography and multidomain roles in the latter. The same is true regarding the institutional emphasis on the threat posed by Russia compared to a nascent awareness of China. Moreover, the Army’s force-generation process is optimized to meet rotational requirements elsewhere overseas and not for the modern era of great power competition against China.
By contrast to other theaters, Army forces operating in the Pacific overwhelmingly consist of permanently assigned forces, rather than rotational forces, meaning fewer troops from the continental United States ever gain regional experience. If they do, then chances are they serve in Korea where they are alert to another important problem set—but not the “pacing threat.” Thus, by default, the Army and its major institutional commands like US Forces Command overwhelmingly concentrate on generating readiness to meet demands in other theaters. In other words, the Army’s headquarters and the bulk of the force do not make China their main focus.
While it may be true that the US Navy and US Air Force would play leading roles in a regional war in the Indo-Pacific, the US Army provides critical capabilities—like common user logistics and land-based air and missile defense—to the joint force at depth and scale. Projecting seapower and airpower is practically impossible without them because of inherent joint interdependence with land power. Further, Europe benefits from a collective security architecture, but the Indo-Pacific does not. Consequently, Indo-Pacific allies and partners—whose armies, in fact, comprise 80 percent of their militaries—require greater commitments from the US Army to resist Chinese coercion and intimidation within their territorial boundaries and sovereign areas.
Even respected proponents of prioritizing Europe like Army War College Professor John Nagl who have come to appreciate the scope and importance of US Army Pacific’s role typically do so only after directly seeing it. Nagl wrote that he “didn’t understand the organization very well” until after he taught a new course in Hawaii for soldiers freshly assigned to the region. The lack of understanding regarding the Army’s role in the Indo-Pacific is part of the challenge, but deterring China and potentially waging a regional war ultimately requires sweeping change by prioritizing this problem above all else.
Three Proposals
Drawing upon insights from last century’s catastrophes and based on the perspective I have gained from my unique experience as a ghost, I invite Army leaders to consider the following proposals. They are not all-inclusive, but can rather serve as initial actions to demonstrate the “priority theater” is indeed the Army’s top priority.
First, overhaul the Army’s force-generation process to expose more troops to the China problem set. In 2020, the Army created a new force-generation model to regionally align Army formations, generate readiness to meet global demands, and sequence its major transformation efforts. However, regional alignment never took root because fresh demands from global events like the war in Ukraine and both persistent and growing security challenges in the Middle East outweighed these plans. Seeking more permanent stationing, namely in Europe, is one way to alleviate the resource-intensive burden from constantly rotating forces overseas. Lengthy Pacific experience is in short supply in today’s Army, especially at the senior level, but is desperately needed. Of note, General George C. Marshall, like many of his contemporaries spent his formative years serving in the Pacific.
Second, assume risk elsewhere by funding the Army’s Pacific campaigning activities to the maximum extent possible. The complex formulae involving competition with China and assuring regional allies ultimately require robust land power capabilities on key terrain. This involves the episodic presence of ground forces through longstanding exercises like Talisman Sabre in Australia or Yama Sakura in Japan that place high payloads of troops and equipment forward alongside allies and partners at key times. Campaigning also involves posture initiatives, like prepositioning equipment and supplies, that take years to play out and typically span multiple senior leader tenures. These efforts are vital to placing Army forces in positions of advantage so they can accomplish their mission as an integral part of the joint force.
Third, given the enduring nature of the region’s maritime geography, a fight in the Pacific requires a lopsided ratio of fires and support capabilities over traditional maneuver units. While the US Marine Corps “stand-in forces” concept promises capability that can rapidly transition to combat, only the Army can add the necessary scale for certain critical capabilities like land-based long-range fires, terrestrial collection, intratheater sustainment, air and missile defense, and command and control. Though maneuver forces are still important, the reality is that these units are in lower demand in the Indo-Pacific because logistically intensive service concepts, such as the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment, are infeasible without the Army’s enabling capabilities.
The hard decisions facing Army senior leaders come down to where they assume risk. Admittedly, objectively prioritizing geographic roles and functions is difficult given the Army’s cultural affinity for its more traditional experiences in land warfare and familiarity with other theaters. However, the trajectory of events in Asia does not bode well for the long-term security and prosperity of the United States.
The Future is in Asia
The death toll from the early failures of World War II was profound. Losses from the failed defense of the Philippines, among prisoners of war, and from the later liberation campaign resulted in the largest overseas interment of American soldiers. Britain’s once ironclad security guarantee in Asia crumbled following the loss of Singapore giving rise to a new centerpiece of the region’s security architecture, the United States. The parallels with the possible consequences of a regional war with China are stark.
The Army is obviously a global force with growing demands in an increasingly volatile world, including from the ongoing war in Europe and a widening war in the Middle East, but anxiety over going “all in on Asia” is unfounded. Russia, Iran, and North Korea independently present significant challenges, and the new coalescing among—embodied most recently in North Korean troops’ deploying into Ukraine—is causing fresh alarm. Yet the most dangerous threat facing our nation—and our Army—is no longer in Europe but in Asia.
If the future resembles the past, land forces will perform decisive roles in the Indo-Pacific based on what they do or fail to do. The Army need not be haunted by two of history’s worst catastrophes in a region that few in our ranks fully comprehend. My experience as a ghost left me with a clear conviction. The Army must overcome its internal tensions by prioritizing the theater where we all have the most at stake.
Tim Devine is an active duty lieutenant colonel and strategist in the US Army. He is a LTG (Ret) James Dubik writing fellow.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
This article posted by Modern War Institute (mwi.westpoint.edu)