This came via Mathew Ygliasias:
Yet all three of his choices — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as the rival turned secretary of state; Gen. James L. Jones, the former NATO commander, as national security adviser, and Robert M. Gates, the current and future defense secretary — have embraced a sweeping shift of priorities and resources in the national security arena.
The shift would create a greatly expanded corps of diplomats and aid workers that, in the vision of the incoming Obama administration, would be engaged in projects around the world aimed at preventing conflicts and rebuilding failed states. However, it is unclear whether the financing would be shifted from the Pentagon; Mr. Obama has also committed to increasing the number of American combat troops. Whether they can make the change — one that Mr. Obama started talking about in the summer of 2007, when his candidacy was a long shot at best — “will be the great foreign policy experiment of the Obama presidency,” one of his senior advisers said recently.
This sounds like a real commitment to national security rather than just using national security as an excuse to give a lt of money to defense contractors.
actually, Gates is in the business of defense pork. some change would be good. Not Clintonesque cut defense spending by 30% to create a false surplus change, but the pentagon is definitely bloated.
I am not convinced that modern mechanized warfare is very useful in the current climate. Big expensive armys are good at going against other big expensive armies. They are not much use against people who can blend in with the general population.
In other words a thirty percent decrease in milatary spending might not be such a bad thing as we probably don’t need more aircraft carriers or helicopters that are easy to shoot down.
I agree with you about ‘big expensive armies’ and ‘aircraft carriers’. There are cheaper ways to go, but just like Barney Frank will pump up Fannie Mae, the JCS will pump up the Pentagon budget. Public choice theory is pretty much inevitability.
Even though RPGs are bad, APCs save lives. And a big expensive army (volunteer) will beat a big cheap army (conscripted). Could be worse.
It seems that people forget that dead is dead. Whether you are shot with an old SKS or a shiny new M 16. To an extant it is almost impossible to occupy a country when the insurgents can melt back into the population especially when the insurgents have access to small arms and even more so when they have access to explosives. Both of which seem easy to obtain.
I am not sure their is a fix to this other than to not try to occupy countries.
Yes, if dictatorships would would open up to inspections, then occupation would not be necessary.
I think I was getting more at occupation may not be possible and occupation is especially difficult with a mechanized army. You can level a village but you can’t control it with our current expensive milatary. Low-tech police stuff might work better and be cheaper.
Low tech police stuff only works because of factors such as:
1) strict gun control laws
2) the lack of fundamental Islamists
When you have to deal with those realities, soldiers trained in house-to-house and armed with M4s might provide some incremental benefit over typical police forces.
Agreed. I was thinking that you probably don’t need battle ships and bombers while they might subdue a country all the collateral damage is probably the best recruiting tool insurgents have.
Agreed, JR. I think the Navy is a tad overfunded.
Like most other things government.
My pick for the most overfunded would go to the airforce or whichever branch of the milatary has the most helicopters. Don’t they know Rambo took a helicopter down with a rock.
I think Rumsfeld had it exactly backwards, we don’t need a high tech army with no people we need a lot of people trained to fight insurgents and we can save the conventional army build-up for when other countries start building their conventional forces.
I think helicopters actually save infantry lives (Navy less so). Helicopters can provide close-in support in varied terrain, and can also evacuate wounded (from rough terrain) to facilities more rapidly than any other transport alternative.
Same goes for tanks and APCs, even though some of them get creamed by a well placed RPG.
I guess you could save even more money by not giving the soldiers guns, or bullets.
The Air Force was Gen. Clark’s main choice in his non-UN vetted op in Bosnia. And they tend to establish air superiority, which saves American lives.
If you’re into that sort of thing.
You might be right. Somewhere I read that helicopters underperformed very badly. If I can find the article I will link to it.