1-4-2-1 strategy

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The 1-4-2-1 strategy was a military doctrine of the United States Armed Forces . Initial approaches to the strategy were launched under the aegis of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in the Quadrennial Defense Review of 2001, a regular report by the United States government on defense policy to Congress , and developed further in several publications. 1-4-2-1 modified the Clinton Administration's Major Theater War Doctrine , which envisaged the ability to wage two major regional wars simultaneously and win one after the other for the United States and its allies.

Meaning and implications of the numbers

The numbers in the name of the strategy had several military and diplomatic implications. In detail they meant:

  • 1: The top priority remains the defense of the mainland, even if this is historically an exception and is therefore considered unlikely. This is why the first 1 is often dropped and the concept is called 4-2-1 strategy .
  • 4: The "4" instructs the US armed forces to act as a deterrent to aggressors and, if necessary, to fight in all four regions if a diplomacy based on it fails in four regions, namely Europe , the Middle East, and East and Northeast Asia . This is known as a "deterrent".
  • 2: In two of these possibly four conflicts, every effort should be made to bring them to a successful conclusion as simultaneously as possible.
  • 1: In one of these campaigns, the political result of the victory should be permanent, so that no further deployment and allocation of supplies is necessary.

All options envisaged that the US military would have the strategic initiative.

Failure of doctrine

In the course of the revision of the Quadrennial Defense Review in the course of 2005, the Department of Defense determined that 1-4-2-1 had occurred, but its implementation had failed. This is primarily due to the fact that American defense policy has to choose between armaments for conventional and unconventional armaments. In addition, many more soldiers are required for the efficient implementation of the doctrine.

Given the political reality of the Iraq war , 1-4-2-1 never became known to a wider public. When it was revised in mid-2005, critics such as Fred Kaplan measured it against the course of the occupation and therefore mostly rejected it as unrealistic.

British-American Security Information Council analysts criticized the strategy for having missed one of its key objectives. Rumsfeld had originally planned to leave the Clinton strategy behind the willingness to intervene with the focus on containment and anti-terrorism, but it resulted in President Bush commissioning two more war plans than his predecessor.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David Isenberg: The US Global Posture Review. Reshaping America's Global Military Footprint. In: www.basicint.org. British-American Security Information Council, November 9, 2004, archived from the original July 7, 2010 ; accessed on June 27, 2013 (English).