The Future of War

(Image by Robert Ariaill)

Our Dear Leader is hell-bent on gutting our military.

While this may not be earth-shattering news to anyone who's paid attention, what is alarming is the magnitude of damage being done to our nation's ability to defend itself and its interests abroad.

Despite China's saber-rattling, PACOM's (Pacific Command) commander still believes climate change is our Number "Yi" Threat.  (Or for Cantonese, as opposed to Mandarin Chinese--Number "Jat").

Things are so bad our Secretary of Defense "Cluster Chuck" can't even concoct a coherent strategy for the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).

The friend who brought this article to our attention made the following observations:

- we have ditched the win-hold-win strategy (itself a replacement for the two simultaneous war paradigm) for a win-wave hands concept. in other words, we think we can deal with one major regional fight, but anything beyond that we will have to rely on "imposing unacceptable costs" for anything beyond that. I interpret that as cruise missiles and maybe some air strikes, not exactly the way to deter a determined adversary.

- There is no real strategy in the supposed strategy document. it reads like a planning and procurement document,as it lays out a lot of "buy this" and "spend on that" sort of programming guidance. Our strategy remains "Asia-Pacific," whatever that really means (the previous article makes that clear - Climate Change!)

- Speaking of AGW, there is a good deal of that sort of language shoe-horned into the document at the direction of the White House. They live in a weird, alternative fantasy world where 1 degree of temperature change is far deadlier than Iranian nukes. John Kerry's statement that climate change is a "weapon of mass destruction" is consistent with White House policy - it was not a flippant or one-off comment.

 - The DoD and White House have opted to focus on future capabilities and technologies at the expense of current capability and readiness.  While this is the same thing we did in the 90s (and which I thought then and now was the right thing to do), we do not have the luxury of trading the present for the future.  We have multiple, overlapping and immediate issues to deal with.  Cutting current capability and readiness will lead to short and medium term dangers that we should not allow.  The real answer is to do both, but that is not in the cards with the leftie Dems and the growing isolationist GOPers.

 - All previous references to "global" or "forward deployed" posture or strategy have been subtly altered to "homeland defense."  This is a strong statement that our focus is being drawn homeward and that we are slowly letting go of 70 years of forward defense.  This will lead to all sorts of troubles in the decades to come if not reversed.

- Overall, this document codifies America's choice to accept decline as the way of the future. We've all known all along that no external enemy could destroy America, but it could certainly be done from the inside. Well, here we are. My main hope now is that our many enemies will over-play their hand and Americans will wake up and smell the blood and cordite before it is too late. 

Meanwhile Russia's action-figure czar has transformed his army into a lean, mean fighting machine.

To which, this friend observed Czar Putin's actions in the Ukraine will most likely be the template used by our host of adversaries:

...basically, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and other potential enemies have figured out that the way to beat the U.S. is to move quickly, take and hold ground, and present the U.S. with a fait accompli.  All of our wars since 1990 have invovled long, slow build-ups of power.  if you can keep the U.S. out long enough to take and hold the ground you want, and rpevent the U.S. from building up adjacent to the war zone, we will not be inclined to do a bloody, forced entry.  Crimea is a good test case of this -- we could not respond with force if we wanted to (I don't think we should, but that is another story).  When the time comes, China will do the same with Taiwan and/or the Senkakus.  

The future of war is here.

(Hence the title of this post).

As long as the Obamanistas get overcome by events beyond the Ramparts of Civilization, we can only watch the world burn...

(Image:  The late John Candy derived from the movie Stripes)