Slash And Burn
By Mitch Berg
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
New thinking for the military.
We’re keeping the fantastically expensive and kludgy F-35 plus all 11 Carrier Battle Groups but we’re going to cut the A-10 Warthog, since we’ll never again need a tank-buster. And the U-2 is obsolete in the satellite era. Oh, and we don’t need 100,000 people.
I get that we don’t want to be preparing to fight the last war. But what war are we preparing to fight?
Joe Doakes
Back in 1987, the great historian Edward Luttwak wrote The Pentagon and the Art of War, a comprehensive critique of US military strategy at a time when we’d just endured five straight military failures (Vietnam, the Mayaguez incident, Desert One and Lebanon) and one unnecessarily costly victory (Grenada).
The conclusion? The US didn’t really have a strategy; our military was designed to fight the Cold War as a rematch of World War 2, and our military was not really suited for the threats we faced or the society we had.
The book tied in with a wave of thinking in political and military circles that led to the epic reforms of the late eighties, based on the world as it was at the time.
I’m not convinced that the cuts Obama is proposing have anything to do with the world we live in.
February 27th, 2014 at 8:41 am
Hugh Hewitt says that the Navy cuts are a huge security risk.
I can’t understand getting rid of the A-10 at all.
February 27th, 2014 at 10:19 am
I don’t think congress ever expected the Pentagon to comply with it’s budget. Now that it has done so, watch the congressmen squirm and fight to keep the pork in their districts, and the Pentagon can sit back and laugh at the show.
February 27th, 2014 at 10:21 am
<tinfoil hat mode on>
I get that we don’t want to be preparing to fight the last war. But what war are we preparing to fight?
I don’t think this administration is preparing to fight any war. I think they’re preparing to LOSE the next war.
<tinfoil hat mode off>
February 27th, 2014 at 10:26 am
The Air Force is important for force projection and because it manages our outer space assets. The Navy is important for force projection and keeping the oceans open for merchant transport.
Not sure what the Army is for these days. Occupying a country? Which one?
February 27th, 2014 at 10:27 am
Of course the Obama military cuts have “nothing to do with the world we live in.” They have everything to do with the world OBAMA lives in. Any resemblance between these two worlds is purely impossible.
February 27th, 2014 at 11:03 am
“But what war are we preparing to fight?”
There won’t be another war because this one will never end.
Changes in defense spending — what and how much — are rarely the result of a single brilliant blueprint but rather the accretion of trends and intentions over time that gradually move the budget towards convergence with need and strategy. The endpoint of the just-proposed Hagel-Dempsey defense plan is a more intelligent use of resources better suited to the future world. As such, applaud it.
February 27th, 2014 at 11:26 am
So, MBerg, what war do you think we should be preparing to fight?
February 27th, 2014 at 11:32 am
The Second Civil War.
Just kidding*. I think we’re looking at a Second Cold War with China before too terribly long.
* Hopefully.
February 27th, 2014 at 11:37 am
So nobody knows which war we should be preparing to fight. And why is that? Because we can’t decide on America’s role in the world. If we want to be an imperial power, we need a far, far larger military and we need to start occupying countries like we mean it. If we want to defend our own soil, we can dump the long-range force projection and ramp up the border security.
When we had The Monroe Doctrine, we knew our political objective so we could adjust our foreign policy and calculate our military needs. I strongly suspect President Obama doesn’t have a unified vision of America’s role in the world, which explains why his foreign policy is in shambles and our military is drifting toward irrelevance.
February 27th, 2014 at 11:42 am
JMO, our democratic processes are a big disadvantage these days given everything.
The simple fact is, the U.S. taxpayer keeps trade routes open. Maybe we would be better off if global trade took a huge dive. We are way more self sufficient than most countries.
February 27th, 2014 at 12:00 pm
Mr. Doakes:
To the extent that the American myth creates Americans who are optimistic in outlook and independent in their thinking and problem solving, this is clearly a good thing. That it leads them to do self-destructive things like invade countries to spread democracy, it is a bad thing. But it is American. Only a profound and extended defeat, economically or militarily, is likely to change the American zeitgeist. And I think many would miss the positive aspects of America exceptionalism as much as the departure of the negative aspects would be welcomed.
February 27th, 2014 at 12:01 pm
I agree with Joe Doakes: ” . . .we can’t decide on America’s role in the world.”
It is important to remember that the UN still plays a very important role in legitimizing or de-legitimizing conflicts, especially cross-border conflict.
When the UN was founded, it was believed that the greatest threat to world peace was nations taking chunks of other nation’s territory (for obvious reasons). It doesn’t matter whether whether or not this is still true. Institutionally that is how the UN works. That’s why the UN backed the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and why it did not back the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The Air Force can project force w/o invading another country, the Navy likewise. Reality would seem to dictate that we emphasize the ability of the Air Force and the Navy to do their job, while de-emphasizing the role of the Army.
February 27th, 2014 at 12:11 pm
I have no idea why they thought we could “help” Afghanistan.
FWIW Iraq http://bit.ly/1fWTgI5
February 27th, 2014 at 12:52 pm
We have lost the will to win. We have more military capability than ever, but, a few bad pictures of a very few soldiers surface and we have to change every thing.
We can’t even name the ideology we are fighting. We allow foreign Nationals from the very Nations we are fighting in to visit and even immigrate. We are even promoting the formation of more hostile governments with the same ideology we are fighting.
If our military has to fight with its hands tied, politicians second guessing every privates smallest actions and not be able to use the name Islam when referring to who the enemy is, it should be cut because we will lose every war until we regain the will to fight.
February 27th, 2014 at 2:32 pm
This is what you get when you are a nation in decline. We no longer have the ‘product’ in gross domestic product to afford an all encompassing military that is able to fight multi-front wars, hold territory and project force while at the same time subsidize crony capitalist losses, expand dependency classes and underwrite a large number of baby boomer retirements via public employee pensions and social security. There’s a reason no Socialist country was considered policeman of the world; they didn’t have the money.
On a positive note – the Pentagon could work out some type of agreement with our many para-militarized city & county police forces. My little town of 20,000 has an armored personnel carrier as well as a re-enforced mobile command center (and that’s just the stuff we see in the homecoming parade). I’m sure they’d be willing to share.
February 27th, 2014 at 3:06 pm
Barry has de-constructed the idea of protecting America through military strength consisting of a well prepared, well armed fighting force to a new plan the focuses on naming and shaming.
February 27th, 2014 at 3:52 pm
In solidarity with the Obama White House, I understand the NFL has notified city leaders in both Kiev and Damascus that if Putin brings his anti-gay ideology to Ukraine or Syria, their towns will not be considered for future Super Bowls.