SecDef Gates thinks the time for force on force ground campaigns may be over:
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates bluntly told an audience of West Point cadets on Friday that it would be unwise for the United States to ever fight another war like Iraq or Afghanistan, and that the chances of carrying out a change of government in that fashion again were slim.
“In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it,” Mr. Gates told an assembly of Army cadets here.
That reality, he said, meant that the Army would have to reshape its budget, since potential conflicts in places like Asia or the Persian Gulf were more likely to be fought with air and sea power, rather than with conventional ground forces.
“As the prospects for another head-on clash of large mechanized land armies seem less likely, the Army will be increasingly challenged to justify the number, size, and cost of its heavy formations,” Mr. Gates warned.
Don’t know about you, but if feels like we’ve been down this road before. Mr. Gates’ predecessor notably regretted having to “go to war with the army you have,” rather than the one he wished he had. To me that means having a ground combat element capable of the full-spectrum of military missions, from humanitarian assistance, to training foreign indigenous forces to combined arms mechanized maneuver.
This is not to say that you’d ever seriously contemplate another nation-building mission as we’ve attempted in Iraq and Afghanistan. But we ought to retain a nation-breaking power, and when it comes to enemy ground formations that cannot be done with air and naval power alone – someone has to hold the hill and plant the flag, even if only to haul it back down again once the enemy’s will to fight is broken.
To me the secretary’s speech sounds like we’re tailoring our missions to our budget, which is not in itself an irrational thing to do. But we might as well be honest about it, and admit that we’re voluntarily curtailing our ability to project power in traditional ways in favor of I’m not exactly sure what.
Well I’ll admit I have an inherent Army bias and you’d never get me on a ship (although a mate of mine, a combat engineer did do an exchange with a submarine, thought it was cool till he realised he wasn’t qualified to do anything and couldn’t even look out the window).
That said you fly over, bomb it and then……..? Some guy still needs to go stand there with a rifle it you either want to hold the ground or put your boot on someones neck.
General LeMay please call your office.
Given LeMay’s background, I think he would agree with you Sim. AAF Ossifers knew they had to put 18 yo kids with Garands on the ground to win. You can neutralize assets with an Air Force, but you can’t take ground with ‘em.
Gates is being his normal stupid self.
What, again? How many times must we go through this?
Maybe we just imagined that WWII, Korean, and Vietnam didn’t need ground troops.
Oh, and the British won the Revolutionary War with only seapower. That blockade of Boston did the trick.
Oh, and the War of 1812 ended with a swift British victory with the shelling of Fort McHenry.
Civil War was no big thing too because that blockade of the Confederacy’s ports worked so well.
Seriously, does this guy get a paycheck? If so, why?
George V.
As a Seabee, it would suit me fine to be able to park multiple Naval Missile Platforms off shore and just need to send GPS trageted payloads to the locations desired BUT that has not been effective as the bad guys like to hide in fortified underground facilities and the civilian population takes the brunt of that type of assualt. It temporarily puts the enemy down but not out.
The nature of conflict will be very similar to Afghanistan where our enemies will not wear uniforms and use the locals as a screen against our ability to take them on. Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, etc. etc. will require “boots on the ground”….The US Marines have been the most effective weapon we have in AFGHN so why wouldn’t we want more of that type of force?? Politics maybe??
China is not looking to play nice and neither is Russia….Our battles will be more intricate and we will need to have a force that can evolve to meet the need of the troops who WILL BE on the ground. we will need both troops and the ability to project force ashore.
The words of a ficitional leader fits today’s situation -
Theoden: “Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like wind in the meadow. The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
How did it come to this?”
Idiots have been making this “infantry is obsolete” claim since the invention of the horse.
Looks like they still do.
Heck, we didn’t need that power-projection stuff anyway. Our Chinese debt-masters disapprove of it.
You mean our Chinese labor slaves?
You forget that while China can cause us problems by dumping their US bonds, we can cause them equal if not greater problems by imposing a 600-700% tariff on Chinese goods. In fact we may be in the stronger position, since there’s a lot more cheap labor in the world than safe places to invest.
The best way to ensure you don’t need to fight a large land war is to have an overwhelming ability to fight and win one.
Amen! Only if you have the capability will people leave you alone.
Peace through superior firepower!
If you would have peace, then prepare for war. I’m sure Lex, or another here, could quote Vegetius the Blind in the original Latin.
This is what Gates perennially fails to understand. We aren’t going to fight a traditional ground war because our military has the ability to curb-stomp any non-nuclear military. As we lose that ability, the probability it will be needed goes up.
There’s some days that Gate’s is smart, and some he’s just dumber than dirt. Today he’s dumber than dog shit.
My Air Force will love this for budgetary reasons alone for sure..but as one of the sharpest young CMSG Intel types I ever met once said: “Capt, when is the AF ever gonna learn that you can’t ‘occupy’ a piece of ground with a bomb.”
Of course, Gates’ remarks about depending on the USAF & Navy would seem more logical were it not for the fact that he gutted the F-22 program and the Navy/USMC maj. wpn procurement programs weren’t in such total disarray…plus shrinking the overall budgets of the very two services he claims we will be–by his own lights– increasingly dependent upon..
“We didn’t want those grapes anyway..”
This is ALL about bean-counting and NOT about strategy.
PS: And let us not forget the MINIMUM 18 CVN Navy task force that such a strategy depends upon–glaaad to see all those carriers and assoc. vital support hulls are on order, yesireee..
As an occasional student of military history, it seems to me the best way to ensure you will face heavy divisions, or any other capability, is to not have any yourself.
This the same kind of thinking that made the F-8, the “Last of the Gunfighters”. As I understand it, not having “close in artillery” really didn’t work out so well. Eventually even the Elitists realized the whiz/bang stuff, while it had it’s place really wasn’t the end solution they thought it was. Shouldn’t have happened that way.
XBradTC-Exactly. Mr. Gates meet Mr. N. Chamberlain. How many times must we repeat this cycle before we get it?
The world is filled with bad guys, that will not change, so you better be prepared to go to war all the time and hope you never have to.
BTW, we would have all the “resources” we need if our leaders would stop the all the give away programs and other “get re-elected programs”. The Constitution says “Promote” the general welfair, not “Provide”.
Get it where, Mark? In the ash can? Having a world filled with bad guys doesn’t bother me nearly so much as a world filled with stupid people.
Which, as comedian Ron White made clear, “You can’t fix stupid.”
It goes beyond just stupid. Every generation seems to produce its share of starry-eyed idealists who convince themselves that somehow humanity has “improved” and “gotten beyond” war. We are all enlightened,and O, much too sensitive and sophisticated to engage in war. Yep. Sez so right there on the box!
Ever notice that these types always come from Western European stock? You don’t hear it coming out of China, or anywhere in Africa, or the Arab world. Even Russia doesn’t really spout that stuff, although the old Soviet Union did – but it didn’t really believe it or expect anyone else to believe it meant it. It was just a ploy to freeze the westerners who really did buy into it.
Mankind is what it is, has been since the first two groups disagreed over who had control of the waterhole.
We’ll get it, most likely in the back.
I think we can all put our feet up. Any coherent threat assessment for the coming decades shows some really remarkable numbers. To misquote Ghostbusters, “who you gonna fight?” China? Couldn’t get the job done in Korea with a million men. Russia? Please. Anybody at all in Europe or Africa?
If there are some countries that are a little fearful of the regional hegemon let them grow an army of their own. Why should we continue to field armies half a world away 800 miles inland?
It has become painfully clear that a man with a rifle no more controls the ground he stands upon than a B52 controls a city. The observant may have taken notice of that as the wars progressed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, etc.
Oh and those numbers? Look at the size of populations under age 20 around the world and then look at ours and recall that we won’t even accept the majority of ours as soldiers.
This is what you get when a bean counter is put in charge of ‘get your hands dirty’ kind of work. Zero appreciation for how the job actually gets done. It would sure be nice to have a ground warfare officer in next as the Chairman, since the current one obviously didn’t kick his boss’ butt up around his shoulders for such an asinine remark.
Remind me again, someone, of the name of the RPV that found Saddam hiding in his little cubby hole. Which RPV Regiment did it belong to? Let’s not forget the AI command structure that issued the orders and provided support services during the capture. Presidential Unit Citations all around for an outstanding job, and for making such tremendous bloodless sacrifices! No death benefit premiums paid out. So many millions of dollars saved! Hurrah!
I’ll pick the fight here…
I think it’s FINALLY sinking into Gates’ head that counterinsurgency is an inherently unexecutable strategy for the United States…and that our force structure is badly in need of rebalancing to meet the future threat.
COIN demands manpower and patience. The U.S. can’t afford the manpower without both conscription and a dramatic pay cut. And the American public has never been willing to fight for much longer for three years. The Iraq campaign may have been successful, but at devastating political cost.
And the force structure is WAY out of balance. The structure of the mid-’80s was designed to fight a land war against a largely landlocked opponent. The structure of the mid-’90s was a smaller version of the ’80s force structure – Goldwater-Nichols saw to it that rebalancing was nipped in the bud. And the force structure we have today is the ’90s structure with the land components further bloated with light forces for COIN.
Old days are past, old days are done. Our future potential opponents have seacoasts, and friendly nations next door are in short supply. And we don’t know just where the crisis will bubble up. Strategic mobility will be essential.
It’s time to stop fighting our opponent’s fight, and start fighting OUR way. Leverage out technical and training advantage, dominate sea and sky. We’ll use land forces – the way the British did, as a projectile to be fired by the Navy.
Now, if you want to bash Gates for coming to this realization late, and for making foolish decisions like killing F-22 production – well, I’ll agree fully.
But let’s not deny credit where it’s due. Or stick with an outdated force structure when we desperately need to rebalance.
I disagree: once we cut apart the Army, there’ll be no putting it back together again. You’re talking about losing a large percentage of capability in terms of manpower, training and most importantly, experience. The next war won’t allow for 2 years of building up before we start the road to victory. We’ll fight it with what we have and if we don’t win in the first two weeks we’ll be screwed forever. We DO have enemies out there. Only a fool or Nancy Pelosi would think otherwise. Not have the force structure to defend the nation in a place OTHER THAN OUR HOME GROUND is suicide.
Now if you want to cut the fat out the military budget, 1) overhaul the procurement process. For every dollar we spend on anything we get screwed out of 2 more. Second, get rid of these bloated staffs. We have more admirals than we have ships, for God’s sake. And all those admirals have a herd of useless straphangers, military and civilian alike. Get rid of them.
I think we need to bring the draft back. Not just to provide a strong force, but to reconnect the people with the responsibilities of citizenship.
having said that, COIN does not require unbalancing the force. We can have Mech Infantry that can leave the Mech behind and go into Indian Country as Light Infantry. They are not so poorly trained as being unable to go back to being straight leg Infantry on call. COIN is Infantry warfare. It might be handy having a Tank here and there, but Tanks were pretty much a fifth wheel in Vietnam, except on rare occasions.
Sorry Curtis, but you are barking up the wrong tree here buddy. If you want a good example of an unbalanced force, look at the Air Force CA 1960. The AF was completely SACumcised and AF had a hard time fighting Vietnam as a result. In fairness, the sit during the 50s with Ivan forced the situation with the AF, but the AF was badly unbalanced and it affected the AF for a long time. By comparison, teh Army was well prepared for Vietnam and won the COIN fight after the last coin toss in Tet ’68. after that it was the NVA vs the US Army, and they fared very badly. Their last effort against us in the ’72 Easter Offensive went home with 50% losses. And that was mostly ARVN with a few of our troops and US Aviation assets.
I don’t know where you get your idea Curtis, but you are dead wrong.
Quartermaster,
I think you and I are in total agreement. Your reference to the Easter Offensive kind of makes my point that if a sovereign wishes to remain sovereign it will muster the manpower for field armies and there is NO reason for us to do so for them. We neither need nor want a draft. As I understand it all services make their recruiting numbers already.
Why do you want to go into indian country? I know why our cavalry units did it in the west. Pretty simple really. It was punitive missions and then to drive out the indians and steal the land out from under them. Are we going to do that all over the world? Do we keep the land we steal or give it away to a satrap? Why should we do that?
Oh, by the way, any examples of COIN that worked in this century? I know a lot of cases from history but we’re not allowed to use that kind of thing anymore. It’s a big no no.
I know it will stun and amaze you to learn that my first two college years were as AFROTC which was nothing but lesson after lesson about Airpower. It was the ’70′s and they were still sensitive about Airpower. While some of the problems with USAF application of force were due to crap leadership at all levels far more were due to interference by politicians who were attempting to use B52s as a sort of FEDEX and trying to send ‘messages’ instead of a rain of death and destruction and believe it or not, the USAF of 1960 was in fact well positioned to bring in a rain of death and destruction.
Curtis
We had to underwrite the ARVN during the Easter Offensive and don’t forget Rolling Thunder. Once we stopped supporting the South care to remind us what happened? Were the USSR and Communist China so enlightened with their withdrawal of support and intervention in the North? The question is rhetorical.
COIN successes this century: Post tet Vietnam/After Abrams relieved Westmoreland, the Malay emergency, the Philippines/Moro rebellion. Actually, more COIN campaigns are successful than unsuccessful historically speaking. The COIN successes just don’t make the news.
Yes but we underwrote them with aircraft and naval gunfire support in the main and we got away with it for 3 years until Congress decided to end funding for South Vietnam defense. In other words, ARVN manned up and fought like lions and we aided them with air and seapower but not with deployments of brigades much less divisions.
I would argue that COIN worked best up to TET and since TET resulted in the near total extermination of the VC there was very little counterinsurgency afterwards. After that it was pure NVA operating in the south.
When I think of things we’re just not allowed anymore the Malay solution springs up shining as brightly as the BEF response to the Boer Wars. We cannot ever get away with imposing that kind of solution. Ditto the PI. We’re not allowed to make any more howling wildernesses be it in Mindanao or the Shenandoah Valley.
Case in point. An airstrike goes according to plan but 23 civilians are killed as colateral damage. No harm, no foul. A USMC sergeant fires on people who blew his little convoy up. All but the sergeant are finally acquitted but the sergeant is returned to jail this week after the appeals court overturns the lower court and finds he is responsible for COINING some colateral damage himself along with his squad. LTCOL West ring a bell?
Never doubt that I could advise how to pacify any region with 100% effectiveness. It’s just that we’re no longer allowed to use those techniques.
COIN as practiced in Iraq and Af is just a joke. If you want to see what COIN is look at the IDF back at the beginning or what George Washington ordered at the beginning of the rebellion.
True enough that from ’72 to ’75 ARVN didn’t need our ground forces. As a matter of fact I’m pretty sure we didn’t employ air or sea power during that time either (might be wrong here, too tired to google check myself) but we obviously provided logistical and financial support. An Air Force flying F-5′s isn’t very effective without F-5 replacement parts, ditto an M-113 based army, etc. But would the ARVN have been able to stand up against the NVA had WE not destroyed the VC and had WE not mauled the NVA so badly, and had WE not trained them up during ’65 to ’72 at the, perhaps in absolute terms, near height of the powers (or numbers at least)? Granted there’s more than enough room for argument on how good or bad a job we did of these things overall but the end result is the same, from a strategic point of view at least if not to the dead and families of the fallen. We (the left) politically threw away a war we won, and then turned around (the left) and taught that we lost it on the battlefield, and for all intents and purposes that explanation has stuck with the mass media and the population and people have moved on ever since.
I would also generally agree with your points on COIN. See, I knew you had better content up your sleeve than what you started with! The disturbing thing there is that the enemy has so well figured out how to fight us. Howling into the wind as some do that we should fight our way is rather pointless. We must adapt or we will have our clocks cleaned time and again.
ProwlerAMDO,
I’m afraid that we’re going to adopt our southern DEA strategy to our counter-ISLAM strategy and just expend agents, aircraft and money to no purpose and no gain. We will take on the role similar to that of the IDF and it will be our pilots and agents bleeding out in indian country for little purpose. We’ll have the very best CSAR in the world but we’ll still have the ROE and JAGS and Oversight. Would you volunteer to fight that war? Whenever I think of Force Light my mind brings up Desert ONE.
I enjoyed the conversation. regards
Indian Country is Vietnam Slang. It is not literal Indian Country.
And we do need a draft. Desperately, to reconnect the people with the duties of citizenship. The idea of entitlement is a poison now, and it is mostly because the little darlings have no idea what it takes to maintain freedom.
Curtis, “We neither need nor want a draft. As I understand it all services make their recruiting numbers already.
You may not want or think that we need a draft- many of us do as the effects go far beyond the simple recruiting numbers.
Ron,
WRT the draft, I don’t want it for purely selfish reasons. As I’ve said before I prefer to be there surrounded by other people who volunteered to be there. I know that once upon a time there were civic virtues to be derived from a draft but that time is gone. We won’t take half of the young men because they don’t meet the minimal standard so does that mean only the better half get drafted?
No, they all get drafted and trained, unless they have some disqualifying condition that renders training impossible. Obesity, therefore, would not be disqualifying. You put them in the baby whales company and work them thin, then you can train them. After training you tell them to stay thin, or they’ll be back. No discharges until they are no longer of legal militia age (47 with FedGov).
I would let them refuse, but only on condition they lose voting rights. No honorable service, no vote. Emphasis on the honorable part.
prowleramd – I don’t know your experience with the Vietnam War, but your understanding of it seems very naive and flawed. It was never “won” although we won many if not all the battles. And Linebacker II “seemed” to end it. But those who know, know different. Historian Ambrose is a good source. But I give you Frank Snepp’s authoritative appraisal…. and he doesn’t blame it as that dastardly ‘Lefts’ fault:
And indeed it was another corrupt government leader we supported to our detriment.
Flit, your theory simply is not supported by the evidence. Contrast to Korea. Both were proxy wars where the US fought the USSR and China. Both had corrupt right wing governments we supported. Both were indecisive due to military or political constraints.
In one country we stood fast and supported our ally, the other we abandoned as a matter of law. The former survived to become a democratic economic powerhouse. The latter collapsed within a matter of weeks.
We won Vietnam hands down. ARVN didn’t have the aviation assets they needed, and Kennedy and other traiterous bastards among your side Flit, betrayed all the sacrifices of our troops and those of ARVN as well.
You can’t do much against an invading Army with just 10 rounds and one grenade. That was teh work of your coreligionists among the regressives, Flit.
I can’t agree. We’re not talking about dismantling the Army nearly as much as clawing back the asymmetric increases of the last decade designed for the COIN campaigns. IIRC, ten years ago, the Army had 30 brigades. Today, they’ve got 36. I don’t see anyone thinking in terms of less than 24, more likely 27.
And trading off COIN capability to get back our ability to fight a conventional opponent soundl like a prudent move, too.
As for procurement reform, I;d be delighted to head up the effort. After 30 panful years in the business, I know just what to cut – and ditching every “reform” of the last three decades is a great place to start.
Perhaps Mr Gates will order the removal of all forces in Europe and South Korea…pronto if he follows his own beliefs
Gates; yet again, showing that he is an empty suit when it comes to commenting on force structure issues for…. well, anything.
Even if he believed that, why in the world would a sitting SECDEF announce it publicly? God only knows how deep it’s going to get over the next year and a half…
Hey! That’s it! A piece of disinformation to lull our adversaries into a false sense of security and complacency while we quietly build up our forces across the board! Yeah! That’s gotta be it!
Hey, buddy, enough of that Adolf Hitler kind of talk!
Of course, he got away with it for a while. Didn’t he? Clever fellow, that one.
What? Am I giving Gates and the former jr. sen. from IL too much credit for intelligence?
Maybe just a little
This has absolutely NOTHING to do with strategy, force projection, future war fighting capability or anything else other than PRESERVING OR INCREASING THE MONEY AVAILABLE TO OUR JUG-EARED ORGANIZER FOR ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS AND POLICIES to buy votes for his next campaign. To do that, he MUST GUT THE MILITARY in order to use that money for his Maoist, anti-American purposes. With that money he can either get re-elected, or move on to his next position of Sec Gen of the UN, where he can continue to destroy America in favor of his anti-American and anti-colonial cronies around the world.
This was a signal to Army that in the coming budget wars, do not/not expect that as part of the recapitalization of the land forces post a decade+ of Eurasian land wars that you will recoup 1:1 what has been worn out. In part, this is one of the rationales behind the AirSea Battle concept/study. For the Sea Services – the coming debate will focus on “offshore balancing”. A survey of the articles at the link will show that there is a pretty wide gulf between (a) what folks believe actually constitutes OSB and (b) high-level concept discussion and obdurate reality.
w/r, SJS
I’m going to side with Secretary Gates.
We don’t have the ground forces now to conduct a counterinsurgency involving a population above 40 million.
The most likely places such as Iran and Pakistan are just too big.
We aren’t going to do anything about North Korea without Chinese consent and if the Chinese would just pull the plug on aid to N Korea it would implode on it’s own.
“You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, and wipe it clean of life – but if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman Legions did – buy putting your soldiers in the mud.”
T.R. Fehrenbach
Perhaps the good Secretary should take a few hours of his time and read Fehrenbach’s classic tale of what happens when you allow your ground forces to fall into a state of criminal unpreparedness. “This Kind of War- A Study in Unpreparedness” should be required reading for any military professional, and our civilian leaders.
What part of “not our problem” do you fail to understand? Who, when and why was world police made our responsibility made manifest? Are we the Roman Empire?
You may triumph on the fields of the Pelnnor for a day, but against the Power that has arisen there is no victory. That Power in the east is way more akin to Mordor than the USSR ever was. The only way to stop them is with death. Yeah we can still win if we want to but we no longer wage war the way George Washington waged war. Outright genocide is frowned upon.
You know it is each sovereign state’s responsibility to provide for its own defense and if it is too weak then to negotiate treaties with friendly sovereigns. Have you seen any of those of late?
Who said anything of the sort Curtis? The “not our problem” syndrome, however is something that doesn’t apply in too many cases for us. We have too many interests in the world to just ignore much of what goes on.
We can, to an extent, fall back on a strategy of containment as we did with Ivan after Truman disarmed us after WW2, but it was an expensive thing to do. Now, I would rather spend treasure than blood, but what Gates is pushing will force us to expend blood an treasure one day in a battle we can’t hope to win, but will, as Churchill said, fight because “it is better to die than live as a slave.”
I’m not so charitable as ELP. Gates is a moron. Empty suit is far too weak a description of teh man. Although, I must say he fits well with the Obamanation’s weakness.
Quartermaster,
I simply propose that we look at pairs of countries each with the ability to lock horns with each other and get physical, and extrapolate over the rest of the century. It’s a serious question.
Where do you see us involving ourselves in a significant land war? Can we dismiss nuclear powers from that equation? I don’t do FMS anymore but I think even the ROK have woken up to smell the coffee and figured that there is little left but ROK power on Peninsula (not right now of course. Foal Eagle starts on Monday.) Regional economic superpower up against the 192nd economy on the planet. Don’t care about them if they don’t care about them.
The last major proxy war ended almost 40 years ago.
Gates is a very smart man. I wonder if he’s read his Thucydides and is thinking that we should spend a few decades staking out a position along the same lines as Athens and under no circumstances go to Syracuse.
True. But we don’t want their land. The goal is to affect their behavior. Which can be done just as well with a bomb dropped from 30,000 ft as with a bayonet through the belly.
Not necessarily. We droppend plenty of bombs on Al Queda and it did little to change their behavior. Indeed, the perception that we were too cowardly to actually invade may have encouraged them.
Mr. Gates has always seemed dumb as a bag of hammers to me. I hear nothing in this latest announcement to dissuade me of that opinion. I am not stupid enough to believe that the Submarine Force can win our future wars alone, neither can the carrier battle groups win Victory alone. We’ve been told for the last 70 years that armies are becoming obsolete, and machines or diplomacy will replace Men under arms who close with, grapple and destroy our enemies. It has been wrong every single time, and has come from Men who were smarter, and frankly had more wartime experience, than Mr. Gates. He is not a bad SecDef. He just follows his “masters’” orders too willingly for the country’s actual good.
Maintain the Army and Marine Corps, grow the Navy and Air Force and stop pussyfooting around with welfare for people who don’t earn it. Not a single politician in DC has the balls to actually defend the country effectively. None of them.
Biggest bunch of airheads I’ve ever seen.
Subsunk
what he said…. Gates is a fing moron, which is why he got the j*b.
Subsunk, not even Allen West?
Who has ordered this unilateral disarmament? What power(s) benefit from a disarmed America? Rome, to Carthage: “Disarm. You don’t need weapons; we’ll guarantee your security.”
Eric Hines
Might as well throw me whole salvo of 2 penny piles at as many people/issues as I can here:
- The NYT Article/Gate’s Speech/Gates as SecDef: Kind of a sclerotic article that I’m assuming picks and chooses, hopefully not very coherently -if there even *was* any coherency behind Mr. Gates’ speech to capture in small snippet- from what was said. A smaller Army, no land wars in Asia or the Middle East, but a return to more mechanized combined arms training? If we see no land wars in Asia or the Middle East and plan on dismantling our COIN/regime change capability, what is this mechanized force for? A modern day Mexican incursion? What is the purpose of an Army if not to change the political structure of the land it occupies? Gates has been the ultimate organizational yes man, so if he starts talking incoherently about cutting the military sans any strategy or overarching force structure to match said strategy this is a channel directly into what his boss is “thinking.” When he mentions the need for more officers to make non-traditional career moves and go into Congressional aide offices or policy research institutes I’m very afraid that we would be blurring the line of civilian control of the military. I’m pretty sure there are already a good number of military officer liaison billets on the hill but active duty officers lobbying congress as part of a policy research institutes sounds like an extremely poor idea to me. Graduate study in principle sounds fine as well, although this also already happens to a larger degree especially with the war colleges and service post grad schools, but in combination with his other suggestions and their likely original source excuse me if I feel we are playing with fire: done right we can produce a more strategically minded senior officer corps which would be a good thing, but I fear the real motivation here is to stealthily march politics into the final institution Gramsci’s proteges have as to now been unable to take over.
- Near term and future strategy and force structure implications. America absolutely is the world police, and distinctly NOT the Roman Empire. The modern nation-state international order got a toe-hold in Europe in 1648 at the Treaty of Westphalia which ended the religiously driven 30 year wars with the Holy Roman Empire and introduced nation-states and downplayed religious difference as a legitimate topic of intercourse between them (although certainly not within them as a domestic matter.) This was a break from the Empire system of the past that has been the largest hallmark of human history when it comes to grand scale political organization. This nation state system is clearly not devoid of war and conflict but America has thrown its lot in with this system as most in line with our ideals of self determination, republican government, and international order and stability. We fought the Utopian world changing threats to this system in WWII that were incarnate in Nazism and Japanese Fascism, and decided, after the massive scale and terrifying closeness of that conflict which required alliance with the threat of Communism, to consciously be the leader of the free world through power to stand down the threat of global communist revolution that the USSR championed. Meanwhile we were more than complicit to let the last vestiges of Empire, France and England’s overseas colonies, gain independence, hopefully free of Soviet influence as was our main ambition in Vietnam. Lee Kuan Yew credits our tying down of Chinese and Soviet energies in Vietnam with allowing the Asian Tigers to quell their own communist unrest and develop into the advanced and generally politically free countries that they are now. Now we represent the bulwark of power that underwrites Nation-State Republics against the new global order threats of radical Islam which wants to replace the current system with a theologically based Caliphate, and the now amorphous and intentionally hidden ambitions of the officially communist Chinese. Deng Xiaoping admonished his countrymen to gain power quietly and hide their true ambitions, and they have done both very well so far. We clearly intend to have the ability to defeat aggressive Chinese expansion which is an air and seapower thing. To secure and influence the Middle East against radical Islam, and South Korea against potential North Korean contingencies, we will need to maintain some sort of army. When it comes to COIN it *is* manpower intensive, but I take my advice on that front from Bing West who knows how to do it. It doesn’t have to be 100% *your* people! It’s better by far to put in enough brigades, SOF and advisors, and provide enough air and sea based firepower on call to start getting our Afghans or Iraqis or Yemenis or Somalis or Libyans or whoever/wherever we may need to go to start killing “theirs.” I also take Thucydides side that war is caused by fear, honor and opportunity, and were America to retreat from our role as the guarantor of a politically and economically classically liberal world order the ruthless who believe in other views, be it radical Maoist egalitarianism or Wahabi Islamic Radicalism, will see opportunity in war and chaos, and both those things are contagious. If we leave the world will suck us back in.
-Curtis: Seriously, what the hell? You’re better than most of those admonitions. A B-52 can hold land as well as a rifleman? Because land is being contested by two different ground forces and neither is in control by no means invalidates that only land forces hold ground. Pull the rifleman out against the Taliban and you’ll find out *real* quick just how well that B-52 does it producing political change on the ground. And comparing China’s military today with the force that fought in Korea? Give us a break . . .
- Acquisition Reform: Reform or un-reform the system all you want. There aren’t enough programs right now (and they are getting less and less with the catch all programs like JSF and FCS) to support a competitive base of manufacturers. Sans enough manufacturers to avoid monopoly/duopoly/oligarchy the structure of the acquisition system is meaningless.
Well, if I may throw back a bit.
“…what is the purpose of an army but to change the political structure of the land it occupies.” When that land is Fort Drum and Fort Stewart and Fort Hood and Fort Riley you could ask yourself the same question could you not? You know the answer from history. What the US Army did was totally utterly change the political structures of the land it occupied in Japan and Germany and to some extent Korea. I think Gates and that ilk are actually looking at and dreading bringing the Army back across the Rubicon. PsyOps is in the air. There is a think tank or two that is delving very very deeply into motivations and culture of the current force and asking themselves some very disturbing questions. They get it all wrong of course. What’s the old saying? Send money guns and lawyers! Nobody ever says send the army!
We actually formed the UN to be the World Police. That was the UN’s job. Arguably, it was their only job. When that showed signs of failure in Korea we formed NATO. NATO was real and all members contributed. Not like that anymore for all the rest of NATO. All of NATO combined (except the US) has roughly the combat power of San Diego County.
What is wrong with Chinese expansion? Just curious. They’re capitalists like us; should we be like France, Britain and Germany in the 19th century and attempt dog in the manger conflicts to close markets against those who are not us?
I don’t understand this COIN thing that forces us to deploy brigades. If the punks aren’t willing to stand up and fight for themselves I just say screw them. If they won’t stand and fight for what they claim to believe why should I?
I don’t think I said that a B52 could hold ground as well as a rifleman but perhaps I should have. For just exactly long as that rifleman is standing there holding everything within sight for so long as he is there and holds nothing after he is gone, a B52 could lay waste to everything in sight which may require the enemy to spend some time driving to ground zero to reclaim control.
AQ Reform. Where are Integrated Circuits, Circuit Boards, Chips, computers, Ipods made?
Yeah, well, in 20/20 hindsight that UN thing didn’t go exactly as planned now did it? I don’t really fault most of our political and military leadership with keeping up the Kabuki of asking Burkina Faso and Sudan what they think of human rights all the while mumbling that we’re the ones who have to really do the heavy lifting because essentially there isn’t anyone else capable of doing it right now, and everyone else showing some willingness to do the job look like they have some pretty horrible ideas about how to go about it. We deal with the world as it is. Wouldn’t it be peachy if Brazil, India, Russia, etc. sure looked a lot more like America and decided to pitch in and help a little bit. I’ll advise you to hope into one hand and crap into the other and see which one fills up first.
Taking off and nuking the site from orbit may be the only way to be sure, but outside of Aliens doesn’t really work here on planet Earth. Punitive B-52 raids from here till eternity achieves what exactly? I wouldn’t put too much stock in them either anyway. Not that it’s not an amazing piece of machinery and well made and all, but we dropped more bombs on Vietnam than in all of WWII and the net effect was pretty slim, furthermore extremely hard to distinguish from the effect of troops standing behind a DMZ. Did they make you read the bombing effectiveness surveys from WWII during your time at AFROTC? Even in Kosovo the air campaign was bombing dispersed decoys while the KLA was being brutally and efficiently done away with until the Serbian Army had to mass to confront the massed Croatian Army. Only then could the massed formations be pummeled and destroyed. An army faced against an air force alone disperses and then laughs as the latter tries in vain to effect anything more than a papercut at budget busting cost and unit breaking op tempo. Not to mention pops off a SAM here or there.
I wish I could agree with you on people not willing to fight for themselves, but we are at war with the ruthless and probably the first principle of human political interaction is that a little violence tends to create a large attitude/behavior change amongst the local population. Government is nothing more than a considered legitimate monopoly on the use of force and the ruthless are frankly those most willing and, unfortunately often, those bravest in using it. When a population doesn’t stand up to millenarian Utopians with no qualms about using ruthless violence precisely for its political effect, and who want to establish a polity aimed at doing harm to us, the fact that the locals are cowed doesn’t logically absolve us of our responsibility for providing for our own defense. There is also the salami slice method of taking over local polities, or just sheer overwhelming force. When a bunch of battle hardened Chechens with some die hard Libyans funded by millions of dollars of Saudi money come to take over a valley of 500 goat herders to use as a base for their training to launch attacks against us, are we really to just sit back and tell those goat herders “go f yourselves?”
Punitive B52 raids called LineBacker II achieved what? I think we called it peace.
You miss my point about hope and change. If we stay seated when the call goes out for the World Police and nobody else jumps up, why should we? We cannot deal with something as tame and simple as Somali pirates. Gates point seems to be one of making us look just like all the others. You know, if we are incapable of action just like all the rest than we can all feel just as good and happy about impotence in the face of genocide as the Dutch do or the Swiss.
GOOD GOD!!!!! Of course the Airpower enthusiasts did not make available or ever refer to the post war Strategic Bombing Surveys!!!! To let poor little febrile minds learn that American monsters killed more men in the 8th AF then were killed in the entire USMC for NO REASON at all. Of course that wasn’t part of the curriculum.
You know what turned the corner there in the Yugoslav War….yeah, a handful of MPRI contractors who taught those silly bastards how to wage land warfare and a little about logistics. It wasn’t the 173rd Airborne and 1st ID now was it? We go back to Gates point that we can shower the bad guys with death from above or offshore without needing to send in the Infantry Divisions.
Saddest story I read as a XXX was how we bravely launched ARM at TV stations in Yugoslavia after dark and ended up killing such dangerous creatures as 19 year old female interns. If you did that to my daughter you would find you had an enemy for life.
Your last paragraph boils down to the last sentence/question. What would I do/we do. I’d send a couple of B52 and kill the valley. We send Reapers and kill the bad guys and a few goats. You might perhaps have noticed the entire total complete absence of even so much as a single battalion of our Army in Pakistan.
There’s no doubt we’ve lost in Pakistan but what are we going to do? There be nukes.
Went NROTC after the first two years so it is possible that AFROTC broke out the Stategic Bombing Surveys in Junior or Senior year. I doubt it since it totally and completely demolished the strategic bombing mythology. Makes one wonder how MAD survived so long as our National Strategy.
Would those Linebacker (my bad, I mixed up with Rolling Thunder earlier) raids have achieved anything without a standing ground army there in the background? The question is literally unanswerable while at the same time necessary and critical to ponder. I’m sure you can deduce my own guess however.
I’m probably taking too many of your points too literally but the Dutch and Swiss simply don’t have the ability to underwrite world order. (As much fighting as there already is, I understand the difficulty in calling it “order” but WWI and WWII show me it can easily get a whole lot worse.) We have the economy and military infrastructure no one else does. As an outside power to most of the world we have a pseudo-excuse too. This will be a bad analogy but entertain me for a while. Recently read “Grand Strategies” by Charles Hill and it was an excellent book, highly recommended. Early on he talks about the Oresteia by Aeschylus as being a story about the state coming into being by employing the death penalty to stop a inter family death feud and establishing a polity that people can put their allegiance to before the clan/tribe. Likewise the scene in Lawrence of Arabia when a shot rings out in the camp before taking Aqaba. Auda will be pleased if the man who killed a member of his tribe is killed, and Omar Sheriff will be pleased if none of Auda’s men harm his own, leaving only Lawrence who can kill the offender (Gasim) and keep the Arab army together as opposed to sliding into a tribal bloodbath. Jump now to the AfPak and India or Iran as the clear regional power with these background stories in mind. In the hopes of preventing a further escalation of conflict in the region, between us, India and Iran who is best suited to take care of this situation? (Don’t forget Russia as a wild card.) Honestly, it sucks to be us sometimes, but geo-strategically this is the role our nation has been placed in to be able to do the most good. To me, any of those other actors “stepping up” bring too much historical baggage to make their contribution anything more than a catalyst for a general region wide war. You are right though about our lack of will though, which all warfare is a battle of wills. Our lack of will fuels much of the global conflict right now, mostly that the radical Islamists are very perceptive to it and feel strongly they can actually win.
ARM performance in Kosovo is another story altogether. I’ll just say I hope the AARGM guys and the guys designing the JDRADM are paying very good attention. It sucked.
I’m confused about stating what you would do, followed immediately on it’s heels by the admission that that is what we are doing in Pakistan and no doubt we’ve lost there. Do I misread you again? Are you prescribing a known losing strategy because it’s just cheap/affordable, or gives us the pleasure of killing at least some Al-Qaeda/Taliban/Islamists?
And as for the Chinese being capitalists I’d refer you to read some Schumpeter. No political freedom, and a minor degree of free-markets with overwhelming government ownership of most of the economy is not capitalism. Yeah, they have some more economic freedom than they did under Mao. The fact that every western academic has fallen all over themselves to proclaim China capitalist makes me weep as to what we must be teaching at the schools of business and government.
Ownership of the means of production has slipped out of the hands of the government. It is something else and it is something dedicated to making a profit for the shareholders. What would you call it?
Ownership of the means of production is one thing. I can turn out a pretty nifty kitchen cabinet using only hand tools in my basement. Ownership of the ports and container ships and customs and the like is entirely different. If I can’t sell that kitchen cabinet to a willing buyer elsewhere without jumping through hoops, it’s not capitalism.
Yeah, we have the same issues here, but that doesn’t make them equally oppressive to the capitalist.
– Max
How are iPads, IC’s, etc. made?
In a very competitive market in which each company making them has complete control over the design requirements they set, the means of production as you mention, and a market many orders of magnitude larger than military systems.
Sorry to be blunt but to me it’s a nearly pointless question for acquisition reform. They’re both high tech and that’s about the only commonality. You might as well be asking how Wrigley makes so many sticks of chewing gum so cheaply.
Defense contractors don’t really get to decide what it is that they build, and the production run relative to the non-recurring costs puts their products in a whole different league than consumer electronics.
IN this case it’s called fascism. Hitlerian Germany was quite capitalist. I.G. Farber, Krupp, Thyssen, and others made Germany’s war machine possible. If they had no toed the line, they would have lost their industries, and so were quite happy to take those Gov contracts and smile all the way to the bank.
The same applies in China. And, there are still a number of Gov owned business in China.
With regard to the chips, they are designed in America and made in China.
The Pakistan example is just a trend. We provide a convenient place for Islamic scum to concentrate where our drones can easily kill them and since it’s convenient for the islamics they spend their time and effort trying to figure out a way to go kill American infidels in the nearby country and very few worm their way to America and hit soft targets. I look at a religious war and it boils down to the West against the Rest. That does not mean that I have any real need to ally with the Shia over in that country and the Sunni over in that other country in their internecine domestic squabbles and invasions of each other.
Decapitation strikes and regime change work for me but I prefer killing them until they come up with one satisfactory to us rather than trying to prop any of them up and engage in nation building.
Following this convo with interest. In re, “acq reform”, that’s a damn good point.
You up too, Lex. I missed your comment here in real time only because I have to get my fix of the CBC series “The DaVinci Inquest”
which begins 0230 every Sat night on ABC. It may be the best “cop” show (although DaVinci is the coroner) EVER in the hist of TV–better even than The Wire & Homicide: Life on the Streets. Google it. And besides Wiki read the precis @ Imdb and all the reader reviews on that site to gain the perfect flavor as they are pretty much dead on. (Series ran from 1998-2005) They are at year 2003 presently.
Dude, TiVo. Now.
And yeah. I don’t sleep much these days.
LOL, Lex. I DO TiVo it, but somehow usually wake-up in time anyway–usually the result of passing out early.
I was lights out by 1900 this evening..
InRe: the discussion between Curtis & PAMDO w.o. going over plowed ground just let me inject the view that I second all those here who view Gates’ latest statement, along with several other leaked commentary from the DOD as a sign of intellectual/policy disarray, e.g., the JCS has let slip that the Marines are to be reduced in size post Iraq/AfPk. Really? How does this square w. reducing the Army *to concentrate on the Navy/AF and expeditionary warfare*? Seems to me by Gate’s own logic/pronouncements if we are only going to do stand-off and/or short “incursions” we would need to DOUBLE the size of the USMC (gnd&air) even as we down-size the Army. Otherwise, Does. Not. Compute. And I still insist on harping on my point about an 18 CVN Navy PLUS several *jeep* carriers (of whatever version) as well–else w.o. them how else to carry out Gates’ latest publicly expressed “vision” (such as it is) and also reflect the concerns about China that the JCS has openly voiced as of late? I would again insist that the muddled, almost logically incoherent pronouncements coming out of the DOD at all levels recently are reflective of only one thing–bean counting. There IS NO strategic coherence. But it all DOES make perfect sense from an “either or” shrinking budget mentality pov. It seems the very concept that perhaps both our immediate & long-term threat assessments dictate a “both and” approach and the political will to fight to expand defense spending even as everything else is being shrunk is TOTALLY off the table as politically un-doable. And perhaps they’re right–even if a pro-defense Republican were President. But you see, this is one of the slyly insidious (and many would say *intended*) anti-defense side-effects of Obams’s “stimulous” and health-care spending–it soaks up ALL the dollars as far as the eye can see for pet Donkey concerns and rewards/locks-in Democrat constituencies while simultaneously starving defense–something the Dems in general and Obama in particular think is *evil* anyway…
However one slices it, from my (admittedly limited) vantage-point, there is currently TOTAL doctrinal confusion within the DOD/JCS about future strategic force development. And the WH is a lost cause–no interest/competence/will–period. In fact open hostility from Obama on down–ESPECIALLY Obama. It is not just the Navy that has lost its moorings and is “all at sea.” The Pentagon itself–and as a result America’s future security prospects–is rudderless and adrift as well..
Maxwell Taylor was (whatever the merits of his vision) almost certainly 51 years premature in entitling his 1960 book “The Uncertain Trumpet.” THAT title , by comparison would more aptly describe today’s state of affairs. The current state of strategic confusion about the direction of Defense policy makes the 60s look like an era of programmatic certitude and overwhelming philosophical consensus (both strategic & tactical) by comparison..
18 CVBGs sounds about right.
VX,
From inside the military right now that sounds about right. I am but a lowly JO, so in my rack at night I dream fondly of silver chickens and shiny stars having brilliant conversations aligning our national interests with military strategy with current force structure and developing amazing concepts and requirements documents for future scenarios because I have no actual insight to that level, but awake I wonder a *lot* just how much of the dreams are real and how much fantasy. Most of the time my best guess as to the ratio makes me want to just go google cat flushing the toilet videos and at least have a beer while the world circles the toilet bowl.
Mr. Virgil,
18 CVN’s are not affordable, even with a booming economy. 18 might be affordable with two Marine divisions and an Army cut back to a defense force for North America, and the USAF pared down to nothing but F-22′s, airlift, and the current bomber force.
9 CVN’s, with another 9-12 “jeep” or normal sized carriers, say like the QE’s the Brits will probably sell right after commissioning. I’d rather have 4 active Marine divisions and perhaps a dozen-15 Army brigades that are a mix of Armored Cav/Light Infantry. I would increase Spec Ops forces to nearly a division in size. And as at least one person here has mentioned use a mix of Fritjof and STANFLEX designed vessels in place of the Lousy Combat Ship.
Still need more F-22′s and get rid of the damn F-35. I like the idea of a NGB with a build of 100 but knowing the USAF as I do (ex-USAF) they’ll insist on the latest greatest tech which means we’ll be able to afford 20-25.
Oh, and a draft would be a good idea. Make sure there are no exemptions for politicians’ kids and/or the well off connected ones and I’m all for it. Personally, I’d prefer to have the people I listed above trained as either USMC riflemen or Army grunts and in the front lines.
So what you’re saying is there’s a lack of leadership in this administration? I’m shocked, shocked, to find someone making such an accusation.
This is what we get for making a man whose biggest accomplishment was defeating Alan Keyes President.
I could go with a USMC of 6 divisions. The Army, however, needs to go to less of a standing component and a much larger Reserve component. The return tot eh tradition of the Navy belonging to the President, and the Army belonging to Congress would be welcome to me. You could have 30 or more divisions in the Army since you aren’t paying a large standing component. Having a small cadre that is full time with each division that maintains and administers with the part-timers drilling seriously, unlike what often happens now, would be workable. Particularly when every able bodied boy is inducted in high school to start training.
I was enjoying it and could have gone on all night but then I rather stupidly used an expression that must have mugged your content filter and went into moderation.
Curtis buddy, all I can say is, you really were a CHENG weren’t you?
Yep. You could tell from the low brow and beady eyes right
I really enjoyed the Navy War College Strategy and Policy course. It was a lot of reading but it was the kind of material that I enjoyed. That was way back in 1994. God knows what they’ve done to the course now.
That does sound pretty cool. I try to read books along those lines, but poorly and with nowhere near the discipline and guidance and structure/organization of a formal academic course. Being restricted line war college is verboetten for me, leaving me with my own personal studies, which always seem to get distracted by hot Israeli chicks shaking their money maker over a hilarious Gaddafi speech dance club re-mix nowadays . . . G-d dang you Lex . . .
All this cogent thinking is OBE unless we reform military procurement and our manufacturing base. Both suffer from crippling over-regulation. We now spend decades in development, stop production lines early, throw away sunken research costs before unit cost savings are reached.
We can’t even extract abundant energy in the US and it’s waters.
To have the oceans safe for trade requires serious planning for a Navy with decades-long lead-times. Although I agree that SecDef and his staff are underperforming here, I agree that we can survive a short time with a reduced army. We will struggle with a weak (less CVBGs and SSNs) and poorly planned Navy force (cough, cough LCS). Our Army and Marine Corps have performed as the best in the world. However, the real threat is in the US.
I aver that today we have internal barbarians that are a greater threat to America, the US Left. Their ethos and guidelines can not succeed with Americans or other human cultures, but their failed theories do not stop their destructive actions. Some examples are crippling over-regulation, debt for nothing but political gain, “diversity” trumping competence, waste and corruption trumping individual achievement, men ruling, not laws– power over others rather than reinforcing success for an entire country.
A strong Army and Navy are unlikely to last unless we return to Constitutional wisdom, wise leaders, and common sense solutions. The Left has won most battles within popular culture, the legacy media, unions, and the levers of power in the executive branch. So we can discus strategy, but the logistics of a strong economy is where I put my focus. YMMV.
“…Someone has to hold the hill and plant the flag”
Perhaps. And someone always will. But why does it always have to be us, worldwide, for big and small brush fires, and for every other nation that won’t, and at a very great cost in blood and treasure to us?
And in the end… we don’t seem to hold the flag despite our extraordinary efforts, despite the costs. So why do we continue attempting a failed policy?
Are we any more at threat from ‘bad guys’ than the European Union? Japan? Germany? France? The UK? Italy? Brazil? Canada? Russia? India? Spain? Australia? Mexico? Etc.”
Why must we spend more than the rest of the world combined on “defense”? And a defense/offense that seems, despite its awesome power, mostly ineffective in shaping today’s world in our favor. Indeed we are hamstrung as in Gulliver’s Travels – large and powerful, but impotent.
Enough with false dreams of nation building. Enough with intervention that causes unwanted and painful blow back. Enough with poking sticks into the Islamic beehive that further incites terrorism. Charity begins at home. We need jobs, not worldwide garrisons and more foolish military follies that are mostly counterproductive. Or bizarrely expensive weapon systems that have no place in our current world.
What may have worked in the 20th century no longer works in the 21st century. [including BBs] Remember, we still have nukes to wipe out any country or more on earth. No one country will ever really attack us, less they are obliterated. We are far safer now than 50 years ago. So why should we run roughshod around the world, alienating people, tempting and inadvertently recruiting more terrorists who can easily use cheap $100 weapons and asymmetric warfare successfully against our billion-dollar equipment? And at the cost of our young men and women in arms.
Despite our awesome power, we have not won much militarily, albeit at massive costs, since WW-II. Indeed some of our military exploits have been “not worth the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier.” Sadly we still have not learned to adapt. But adapt we must. Or we will be a short-lived empire and republic in the dustbin of history.
Filt, not to nitpick, but we spend only 6th in %GDP, which is a much better measurement, to speak nothing of our preference to high tech quality over quantity.
and is considerably below the percentages spent during the 50′s through 70′s.
Defense spending as a percent of GDP can be misleading. 6% is an increase from prior years, mostly because GDP went down, without a corresponding decrease in military spending.
Moreover, much defense spending is off the books, and not included in defense spending/GDP. The Iraq and Afghan wars were done outside of the budget by ‘supplementals’ and their massive costs do not appear as defense spending. Nor is the interest included we continue to pay to China and others after having to borrow to fund those wars. Then there is the spending for our vast nuclear arsenal that is accounted for in the DOE’s budget and not DOD’s. Veteran Affairs is also not included. Nor are expenditures of Homeland Security, NASA intelligence gathering, and FBI counterterrorism. Add all those in and the real percentage/GDP rises significantly, and at a time our country is suffering economically.
Even with the exclusion of the above extras, off the DOD books spending that went hidden into our national debt, strictly DOD spending has still outpaced GDP growth for the last decade, from 3% in 2000 to 6% now. At 9% per annum it has even outpaced a GDP increase. Even though we spend as much as the rest of the world’s combined defense spending, and 6 times China’s, some people incredibly think for whatever reason it’s not enough. Despite all the waste. Kind of like an addiction, I think.
Arguing that defense spending is historically low as a percentage of GDP and can be increased is a bit like a landlord arguing that because a tenant received a much-deserved pay raise, their rent should be increased automatically. Illogical.
Much “Defense Spending” isn’t on defense either. Congress, particularly the left, lards the DoDo budget with non-Defense stuff because it’s more liekly to make it through. Plus, there is a lot of stuff done on military installations that has nothing to do with defense, yet DoDo is forced to do.
Do a little research Flit. The result will be enlightening, even for you.
Even if Afghanistan is worth it (and for what I still do not know), do we have the numbers necessary? Or could we even sustain a force of ten or twenty to one, as is required in COIN? If we cannot – and indeed I know we cannot – then we have no business even trying. Ergo, get out!
Galula is the guru:
The most common mistake with people who argue against COIN is the presumption that those forces must be US GI’s. If you read all of Galula, and indeed he is the best source, better even than Kilcullen who confuses as much as he clarifies, you’ll notice that the more of those forces are local the better. Like Bing West says, the trick is getting our Afghans to kill their Afghans.
Afghanistan isn’t worth it to us. It’s a hole, the only reason people are here is because they cannot be somewhere else. I wouldn’t want the entire country even if it only cost a hangnail on the lousiest dirtbag in our brig.
But, our enemy wants it. It has value to him. It’s at just the right mix of stability and instability that he can buy a friendly government (prior to 2001 the Taliban were pretty much a subsidiary of Al Queda) and so develop the training and research infrastructure necessary to be a global threat.
As long as our enemy wants Afghanistan we should keep it from him, and you cannot do that with airpower alone. When he no longer desires it I’m all for leaving and letting the place burn if that’s what the people here choose to do.
I do believe all of this can be understood if you realize that Secretary Gates is singing this administration’s theme song where our national interests are concerned. It’s an oldie but goodie from WWII–the refrain goes “Roll me over in the clover and violate me in the vilest way you know.” The Bamster has essentially given up on national defense, power projection et al.
Reading through the comments, I think many of us have forgotten the ability of seapower to break an enemy’s economy. The choice is not necessarily between ground assault or bombing – blockade is a potent tool, and a lot more friendly to noncombatants.
Mike,
I think you’ll find that blockade is against the Law and we can’t do it anymore. It’s another one of those tools people like to imagine are still in the tool box.
I also remember the Navy at one point being all about actually killing pirates too . . .
“…a blockade is against the law..”
Not if we call it a “quarantine,” Curtis. If it was good enough for JFK..
VX,
I was just thinking back to the Great Mine Barrage which the Allied Powers left in place until late 1919 in order to squeeze more concessions out of the Germans. One of those hate things. I can’t recall off hand how many additional Germans starved after the Armistice was signed on 11/11/18.
Screw the blockade. Who wants to do laps in the Gulf of Sidra? Haiphong Harbor, anyone?
Or, better yet, a 90 day TorpEx in the Gulf of Sidra, with Harpoon shots an acceptable option. All comers included, with the guarantee of pure adrenalin, heartache, and drama.
Yeah, drama…might even be a movie in it. I can see the title now: “Dust on the Gulf”
The bad guys couldn’t beat our army, so they funded their fellow travelers. “Guerrilla” forces and “freedom fighters” cause tanks and planes are expensive yo.
And now it’s gonna go the other way. Large forces never go out of style. Of course it will start with a low-intensity conflict. Remember Korea. It was all fun and games until the PLA crossed the Yalu river.
The force Gates and Rumsfeld want would be creamed. Even the Chinese have MBTs that are getting close to M1 (1980) tech. The Russians and the Chinese will sell the good stuff to who ever has the money.
Yeah, the bean counters and the pundits don’t get it. They fund expensive systems (FCS, LSC et al) at the expense of maintenance.
Save money? FIRE HALIBURTON and KBR. Stand up more support battalions. End the GCV. AFV tech has peaked. We need more
The Air Force needs that new tank AND more airlift and more airmen turning wrenches. Same with the Navy. I for one will be happy to see Gates. The problem is that the next SecDef (and the Demos love putting budget wonks in the DOD) will cut willy nilly. We can’t go back to the 1990′s.
It seems to me that America must choose its military’s primary role.
Is it:
1. Defense of the Continental United States – peeping over the foresight out the bunker slit at the Russians and Chinese?
2. Extending [and defending] national self-advantage – such as locking in ME oil supplies?
3. Extending [and defending] a particular socio-political ideology – the classic Viet-Nam era global policeman?
4. Treaty or United Nations alliance partner – the classic Korean War role?
5. Prestige statement – the world’s last de facto empire needs to make a show to impress and face down the lesser nations? [As well as to keep the armament sector alive and provide high levels of regional employment. The classic pork barrel ploy.]
Or…
6. Is the answer “All of 1 to 5 above”? In which case the cost to the taxpayer will be horrendous and invites the risk of falling to the floor between all possible seats. And which is, possibly, the key idea that Robert Gates is trying to address.
There is something to be said for keeping certain things going. If we stopped acquiring Submarines, for example, the skills required to build them would probably pass. It isn’t easy to build a Sub’s pressure hull, and the skills pass if not used.
You will much the same in aerospace as well. One reason the Russkis couldn’t keep up was the lack of skill in using modern alloys. The Red Chinks have much the same problem.
Gates must have gotten his crystal ball delivered from DARPA. Why do we insist on saying strategically stupid things for short-term political gain?
And Flashman, your assertions about “horrendous costs to the taxpayer” is a load of lefty bunk. We can afford a defense, to do all the things you list above. DoD budget is less than 4% of GDP and less than 23% of Federal budget. It is outpaced by social spending at 2.5 to 1. We CAN have the defense we need. What we haven’t got is the will. Nor the professionals and statesmen who understand why we SHOULD have it.
It seems to me like Europe is even more underwater than us on the fiscal side, and they’ve pretty much pared defense spending down to the bone.
Entitlements have caused our financial problems, not defense.
I’m gonna hazard a guess beings as Gates is in the bean-counter role and think he’s actually trying his best given his vantage point behind a forest of advisors and indifferent/hostile POTUS. He sees 20 years+ to field a major program like a fighter, CVN, LCS, GCS, EFV, or friggin KC-X and the inherent need to have a semi-functioning defense industry. Pathetic. He sees he can’t fix those things much, but needs to make the calls so we have something nice to bring to the party. Tyranny of the timelines. All that is weighed against the months and beans required to train a Mk 1 Grunt.
What he’s discounting to the detriment of the Republic is that a large standing army (all-arms conventional forces) of the American kind buys you options and deters many evils and generally is our best PR regardless of the Arab street or other planned opinions. Second, we’ll not be having months to ramp things up (Iraq 1 and 2), days and hours will count as in present ME dynamics, Norks, future China Sea/Taiwan posture. I’m remembering the Soviets were not detered by MAD and all our gizmos to enact a nuclear exchange; their calculus was that after the nukes fly, they still didn’t like their odds against our conventional forces. Gates needs to remember the words of our defeated foes, especially since using the gizmos is taboo.
Overwhelming conventional force plus nuclear surety vs an indifferent or hostile world. We tried that once, it worked. We’re looking for a false peace dividend and harmonious bliss with those unable to understand liberty.
I’ve quoted you and linked to you here: http://consul-at-arms2.blogspot.com/2011/02/re-muddy-boots.html