(AFP Photo/Saul Loeb)
Christopher A. Preble, National Interest: The Real Culprit in Defense Spending: Strategic Hubris
Fighting waste, fraud and abuse, while popular, distracts from the real debate: U.S. grand strategy.
There is a wide and growing gap between what officials in Washington demand of the military and the resources made available to execute its missions. Fixing this problem is arguably the most important challenge facing the incoming Trump administration. Last month, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work estimated that the current shortfall could be as much as $88 billion per year, and that is merely to cover current operations and planned procurement. “That doesn’t buy you an extra ship, that doesn’t buy you an extra airplane, that doesn’t buy you an extra soldier or sailor or airman or Marine,” he said. “That just gets you where you need to be, fills in the hole.”
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WNU Editor: A debate on what is the "U.S. grand strategy" is definitely long overdue.
1 comment:
This debate does need to happen. The main problem with why it has not happened before is there have been two basic sides. For simplicity sake let's call one side "status quo." Let's call the other side "change." While there are subgroups on each side, this pretty well sums things up.
Clearly "status quo" is not sustainable. The problem is "change" has been dominated by hysterical anti-Americanism for many years. It is hard, if not impossible, to have a reasonable discussion with many of these people. Add in the fact that many nations are perfectly happy to have the US foot the bill. This way they don't have to and they get a "whipping boy" that they get to flog for domestic purposes any time they feel the need to do so.
Now with DJT as incoming POTUS, we finally have someone who has acknowledged changes need to be made and does not seem to be hysterically anti-American. With that said some of his actions lead to wonder if this man is mentally stable but that is getting off topic.
The author of this article is spot on that a reorientation of our forces to a more America centered position would likely result in us being better defended as opposed to forward deployments in so many places. Clearly our forces do need to be some places but clearly not all of the places they currently out.
So far DJT has not gone nearly far enough in my opinion to get this all changed. If I'm POTUS, I want timetables as to when our people can be out of their countries. I think a reasonable goal would be to end 95% of all foreign deployments by the end of POTUS's second term. This will be most helpful if done in concert with the leaders and military forces of these foreign countries, however, it does need to be made clear that failure to treat our people respectfully will result in IMMEDIATE redeployment. Such redeployments would likely have the added benefit of improving our relations with these countries as well.
Where the author says the United States would "remain" the world's most powerful military force, in order to do this, the US would first need to become the world's most powerful military force if it is to then remain in such a position. While plausible that the US is the world's most powerful force, this is by no means certain. As such, the author should not have used that term. Something along the lines of "the US military will remain a formidable force" would have been more appropriate.
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