re: "The Definition of Insanity"

Deebow at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") found fault with the latest iteration of the "peace dividend."

Money quote(s):

"We did this after WWI, WWII and during the decade of Slick Willie and the Peace Dividend. Resurgent China, collapsing Norks, Nuclear Iran, unfinished Afghanistan; really, I probably could go on and on with people who would wish us ill."

&

"(D)id anyone consult any random first sergeant out in the motor pool or Infantry branch officer on what they learned at West Point?, I mean, besides the mandatory attendance at presidential speeches and diversity classes? You know, the strategy and tactics part, theatre logistics, air land battle? Have any of those mental midgets heard of being there "firstest with the mostest" to win the battle? The 82nd Airborne is built around the idea that we are not going to spend time in the mutual circle jerk of international diplomacy, we are going to put men on the ground to influence our enemies decision making process and get inside their OODA Loop. Ships and airplanes driven and flown by men can still not own the ground that young men in the mud will be forced to wrest from our nation's foes. We owe it to them to give them enough comrades to ensure it can be done.

And the last time I walked the battlefield, the only dude who owned the ground was not the pilot in the B-1B I invited to the party after I kicked it off with my own fireworks; it was me, and all the other dudes on the bad-ass list I brought with me; standing on the earth I wanted to own and kicking the stinking jihadis off of it in the nastiest, most lethal and final fashion I could come up with moment to moment."

These are serious subjects studied seriously by serious people. I'm not sure they fit in with the narrative.

"Wars are not something you can fight with a coupon or try to duck out on the cheap and my bet is that we could afford a poop ton more troops and equipment if we weren't making loans/campaign contributions to outfits like Solyndra and putting our debt at 100.3 percent of our GDP, along with all of the other Marxist crap that the OinC has decided is good for America.

This is bad voodoo and the sooner the amateurs in Foggy Bottom and the Puzzle Palace that are entertaining the whisperings of the Good Idea Fairy are on the rocket sled to irrelevance, the better."

&

"(T)his is the worst idea this administration has ever had, and the Libturds that thought this up better start studying up on their Chinese and getting familiar with the 12th Imam, because there may test questions at the re-education camp later."

This presumes that their new overlords will bother trying to re-educate them.

1/5

re: "I remember Carter's Army"

Bill at Castle Argghhh! reminds us of the bad-old-days (before the Reagan build-up).

Money quote(s):

"We could probably scare the rest of you for hours with tales of how over 50% of our equipment was deadlined because there was no money in the budget for parts, maybe 30% of the remainder was parked in the Motor Pool because there was no money in the budget to pay for fuel for them, but it didn't matter much that we couldn't drive them to the training areas, because there was no money in the budget to pay for training ammo."

Yours Truly recalls how things improved as resources began to trickle down to the troop level during the early years of the Reagan administration, and as how things dried up again during the Clinton years.

"A reporter interviewing the commander of NATO's land forces asked him what equipment the Sovs would need to reach the English Channel if they decided to crash through Fulda, and he answered, "Shoes."

Carter's military, not just Carter's Army, was hollower than the Keebler elves' tree, and we all knew it. It still amazes me is that enough of us were yet willing to fight World War III if it happened..."

We happy few.

re: "The real danger in Washington: defense cuts"

Dov Zakheim at Shadow Government ("Notes From The Loyal Opposition") looks at the consequences of defense cuts.

Money quote(s):

"The military simply cannot sustain cuts of that magnitude and preserve a strategy that, in its fundamentals, has not changed since the end of the Second World War. That strategy called for U.S. forces to deploy "forward", whether in Europe, the Middle East or Asia, so as to fight far away from the United States' shores. With cuts the size of those being discussed, the United States will no longer be able to maintain its presence overseas, other than in a "virtual" sense, and, as one wag has put it, "virtual presence is actual absence."

It is difficult to see how cuts approaching $100 billion in each of the next ten years will not eviscerate the U.S. defense posture. Defense "entitlements" -- military pay and retirement, as well as military health care -- absorb a substantial portion of the budget and seem virtually immune to reductions. It has taken years to move Congress just to contemplate enacting a minor increase in co-pays for the Tricare health program, while any change to the military retirement system, which penalizes anyone who serves less than twenty years but over-rewards those who serve longer, has been strictly verboten. Civilian personnel are immune to reductions -- cuts in any office simply have led civilians to migrate to other offices. Operations and maintenance, which account for about a third of all defense spending, include payments to a huge cadre of "staff augmentation" contractors whose number the department has never been able to calculate."

As a retired reservist, I won't see a dime of my own earned military retirement until I reach age 60. There was talk of starting reserve retired pay earlier than that based upon wartime active service, but I don't think anything ever came of that. In any case, my own military retired pay will be peanuts compared to that of someone in the same grade who served the same number of active duty years that I did in a combination of active and reserve service.

"Cuts in procurement, research and development, training, and spares marked previous drawdowns, whether in the 1970s, the era of the "hollow Army" or the 1990s, the decade of the "peace dividend." This time around, however, the U.S. military and its equipment are worn out, ravaged by two seemingly never-ending conflicts and several other smaller ones that receive far fewer headlines. It actually would take a budget increase, not a decrease, to restore U.S. forces to their pre-September 2001 state.

There is much talk of reducing the Army's end-strength, cutting back on the carrier force, and shrinking the F-35 buy, among other programmatic reductions. While some cuts in land forces are to be expected when all U.S. troops finally leave Iraq at the end of this year (unless Prime Minister Maliki decides he wants thousands of them to stay), and more cuts when U.S. troops depart from Afghanistan in 2014, assuming they actually do leave, those cuts surely place an even greater premium on naval and air forces. If those forces are also cut back, the United States will, sooner rather than later, have to scale back its air and naval presence in both the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific, ceding those oceans to others, be they China, Iran, or India. Indeed, it is ironic that as Washington decides whether to reduce the carrier force by one or two ships, China is building its first aircraft carrier."

I'm sure that our "peer competitors" (i.e., prospective enemies) will be happy to wait and let us catch up to them later when we've got more dough. (Or maybe they won't.)

"The world will not stand by idly if the United States wrecks what has been the finest military force in the history of the world. Instead, nations will, as some in East Asia and the Middle East already have done, look to other powers for support and leadership."

re: "Ties that bind Defense, State"

Michael Clauser at Politico ("published every day that Congress is in session") get this mostly right.

Money quote(s):

"(A) key Washington budget debate: the proportionality of military spending relative to nonmilitary international affairs spending.

The U.S. spends roughly 20 cents of every tax dollar on defense, compared with slightly more than a penny for nonmilitary-related international affairs activities.

Advocates of soft power bemoan Washington’s overly militarized approach to the world, while conservatives are critical of what they view as an ineffective bureaucracy run by establishment elites in Foggy Bottom. Yet of all national budget debates, the fratricide for funds between State and Defense is most puzzling as their roles are so intrinsically complementary."

As Mr. Clauser notes, SecDef Gates didn't exactly take a parochial approach to this dichotomy. He knew that there were some things that the military shouldn't do, at least not in more than a supporting role.

"Deficit and debt reduction are necessary, but not sufficient, to ensure long-term U.S. strength and well-being. And the price should not be forfeiture of essential hard or soft U.S. national security capabilities or America’s leadership role in the world."

Usually we wait until a war is over before cashing in on a peace dividend. The Clinton administration crippled the military services doing this, while shrinking our diplomatic force multipliers just when they should have been growing them.

What' do you call doing this when the wars are still ongoing?

"U.S. leadership requires both hard and soft power working in concert.

The past 10 years of unconventional conflict have reminded the military and its congressional overseers of the inherently political nature of war and the importance of nonkinetic capabilities — like civil affairs teams, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, rule of law educators, development and reconstruction specialists, counter-drug personnel and police trainers. These capabilities are as vital to contemporary conflict as some major weapons systems. Cutting funding for them is, therefore, a kind of unilateral disarmament."

Preach it. "(U)nilateral disarmament." And he doesn't see that as a feature; be secure in your appreciation that it is indeed a bug.

USAID (and the former USIA) need to be re-established as more than contracting and out-sourcing entities, and as independent agencies. The stealth assimilation of USAID into State is just as bad an idea as absorbing USIA was.

"(F)ederal and nongovernmental aid groups are coming to realize how much they rely on the military to provide security for aid workers in pre-, post- and active conflict zones. Human rights watchers admit that the use of force, as in Libya, can stave off grave human rights atrocities. U.S. diplomats know that their ability to “speak softly” hinges on the presence of “a big stick.” " (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Being a superpower means people return your calls in a timely manner. Which is nice.

They don't need to necessarily fear you, just respect that you're big enough that you can squash them by accident if you're not careful.

"Federal budget politics remain the quintessential zero-sum game. As Congress considers where to identify savings, it must acknowledge that defense, diplomacy and development cannot be devolved to state or local-level government. Instead, Congress should redirect its scalpel to departments and agencies whose missions are not as intrinsic to the federal government and to key drivers of long-term debt."

Yeah, good luck with that.

"Granted, this is far easier said than done.

With so many domestic political constituencies benefiting from federal programs in housing, health, education, labor, pensions and agriculture, it is all the more important for advocates of strong and balanced U.S. leadership in the world to work together — and work harder to be mutually reinforcing about the importance to each other’s roles."

Defense and State lack domestic constituencies for their missions except in time of war or international crisis, when American citizens are forced to look beyond their normal everyday lives to the wider world. And State lacks the big ticket items like large domestic bases, expensive procurement programs, and the like that make it a cash cow for legislators looking for a little pork.

Being a continental power that is in fact continent-wide, America is fortunate to be so large that for many of us the outside world is just so far away it hardly seems real. You just have to drive across too many states to even reach an international border for other countries to seem more than something you watch on National Geographic.

_____

Hat tip to the Editors at Small Wars Journal ("facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field").