By Merle D. Kellerhals, Jr.
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says the newly emerging U.S. war fighting strategy will focus on winning one major regional conflict decisively, while at the same time being capable of carrying on smaller-scale deployments in areas like the Balkans, Haiti and Somalia.

However, the United States can no longer follow a strategy that calls for the ability to fight and win two major regional conflicts simultaneously, such as one in the Middle East and another with North Korea in East Asia, he said. The nation no longer has the forces to carry off such a mission requirement, he said during a Pentagon briefing August 17.

The United States in 1993 adopted a national security requirement that the armed forces be capable of conducting combat operations in two major regions simultaneously and winning both -- an approach which became known as the two-major-wars-theater doctrine. The concept was used to guide the armed forces in shaping the size of their forces and equipment, and the requisite budget.

"It was developed in the 1990s. It worked for a number of years. It fit the circumstances of the world at that time reasonably well," Rumsfeld said. "It has not been the case in recent years for a variety of reasons."

The United States has found itself in the last decade engaged in a vastly larger number of smaller-scale contingency operations, as the world has changed, he said.

Rumsfeld said that discussions and reviews since he arrived at the Pentagon in January have made it clear that the United States does not have the forces to meet the requirements proposed in a two-wars doctrine.

"Because of shortages of transport, shortages of troops, shortages of high-demand assets, ... the little secret of the whole thing was that we had the construct, but we didn't have the capabilities to fit them," Rumsfeld said.

He said he has told Congress "in a very open way" of this situation and has discussed it with the president, and studies and reviews have been conducted as a result to develop a new strategic approach that will be used to determine the force size and structure of the U.S. armed forces to meet new demands.

The emerging strategy, which has been developed through the Defense Planning Guidance and the congressionally mandated Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), calls for the U.S. armed forces to accomplish four broad missions:

-- Defend the United States homeland.

-- Prevent regional hostile aggression for fear of the U.S. response.

-- Win one major regional conflict "decisively."

-- Be capable of conducting small-scale contingencies of limited duration in other regions.

Rumsfeld said he is becoming "increasingly comfortable with this force-sizing construct." But a recommendation to the president and to the Congress will await the final report of the QDR required by Congress. The QDR will guide future budget proposals on defense and national security spending.

Rumsfeld said the objective in this process is to establish priorities and impose requirements, and thereby allow the military services to determine how best to meet those demands. He said he does not yet know whether the new approach will bring cuts in U.S. troop strength.

The next step in the process is for the secretary and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to determine if the final plan "creates a coherent whole," he said.

On a related issue, Rumsfeld said during the briefing that one of the lessons learned from the 78-day Kosovo air campaign was that a joint task force set up by the Pentagon to manage the operation and make recommendations to the president reached only 82 percent of staffing by the time the campaign was over.

"That is an issue ... that has gotten our attention," Rumsfeld said. "And so we have been doing a good deal of discussion about standing joint task forces."

Rumsfeld said one of the possibilities will be to direct the regional commanders-in-chief to develop recommendations to create a standing joint task force, which usually draws from all branches of the U.S. military, with full interoperability to manage likely contingencies in those respective regions.