America’s top military officer has underscored the need for reorganizing US combat commands in the Pacific and the Middle East, because the existing war plans are outdated.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford said Monday that the nature of warfare is changing and the United States requires a new staff that can coordinate military responses across regions.
“It’s my assumption today that it would be very difficult for any conflict to be isolated to a region,” Dunford said at a Washington, DC forum organized by the Center for a New American Security. “Any conflict we have will be trans-regional, multi-domain and multi-functional,”
“When you think about potential adversaries in the future, I think we need to think about strategy right up front that takes into account it is in all likelihood going to be fought in that way,” he noted.
As an example, the general said a military conflict with North Korea would not be confined to just the Korean Peninsula as ballistic weapons and cyber attacks would drag other nations into the war.