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'US cannot fight two wars simultaneously'

The United States says it no longer has the forces to carry out its 'two simultaneous major wars' strategy and will instead focus on winning one major regional conflict decisively.

"The US 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," Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a news conference in Washington on Friday.

"The nation no longer has the forces to carry off such a mission requirement 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 did not have the capabilities to fit them," he said.

"The new 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," he said.

Rumsfeld said the two-war strategy was adopted as a national security requirement in 1993. "At that time the concept worked reasonably well."

Rumsfeld said the emerging reality and planning guidance for the quadrennial defence review mandated by Congress calls for the US armed forces to accomplish four broad missions: defend the US homeland; prevent regional hostile aggression for fear of the US response; win one major regional conflict decisively; and be capable of conducting small-scale contingencies of limited duration in other regions.

PTI

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