When Trump tried to call out the military to suppress the communist riots in the summer of 2020, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper simply refused to follow orders.
If I wanted to destroy America, I'd have Trump re elected and then sit back and watch the chaos. The summer of 2020 is just a warm up.
Great essay, you make some points I strongly agree with. I'm not sure the Russian Federation or Ukraine would consider this a small conflict. There is significant use of airpower and artillery on both sides, and the Russian death toll now alone is greater than the American death toll in Vietnam if my wiki skills are correct (check me). You could also look at the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which has a feel of the 6 Day War to me in terms of speed and lethality of new weapons and ways of warfare.
The overall point you make about "where the real war is" is of great importance today. There are new ways war is being waged, new domains and dimensions of warfare as you point out. Whoever can understand these first will have immense first mover advantage over their adversary. I think it is possible that WWIII is absolutely possible to be fought and lost before ever having realized we are in it. Such is how narrow minded our current framework of things is. WWII was labeled as such politically, and WWI was not a World War until after the fact... The Great War conjures very different ideas to mind than The World War. I don't think this means abandoning pursuit of more traditional weapons, but it certainly entails reimagining how we think about and use those weapons... and maybe even what even is a weapon now.
Your implication that what we tend to think of as political (illegal aliens) is today a part of war absolutely resonated with me. Thanks for writing this.
A war against a major power will be in the cards as long as the regime in power remains as egotistical as it is. American leaders are always willing to test our rivals first, and this will always run the risk of scaling up.
This isn't rational decision-making, it's an endless series of provacations made by a nation with a weakening force.
Excellent piece and I agree that most of your prescriptions would be a better approach than the current one. The problem I see is that you’re looking at this from the perspective of someone that is actually interesting in providing competent defense and not wasting money and resources.
Those in power are intent on the opposite. They don’t see national defense as anything more than an economic bludgeon to be used overseas and a gravy train to ride domestically. From that perspective they’re doing exactly what they should.
Agree with everything. The only addition would be to note that it's also unlikely there would be a 'world war' ever again, with as many nations dragged into fighting a huge conflagration with another grouping of countries. If the US went to war with China, maybe that would come close, but most countries would probably just shamelessly sit it out.
So if there's no need to be prepped for ground-based WW3, then why keep the huge number of, and deployment of globally, troops.
It's certainly a sort of bribery and coercion to other countries. Japan and Germany get a huge subsidy for having tens of thousands of Americans on their soil, and some comfort level that they can underpay their defense budgets knowing Washington would never let anything happen to them.
I also think there's a part of your analysis that could use more development that Washington uses its raw troop manpower as a way to augment the forces of its vassal states. Washington has a dollar empire for economics, and then requires the vassals to field their own defense, and when they fail, that reserve force is ready to deal with insurgencies, conflicts, and small flare-ups as they arise. That might explain the reluctance to let go of the big navy and big troop counts even though, as you point out, it's all irrational otherwise.
And let's not forget the political reality that the right sees defense as the kind of welfare they can endlessly subsidize because that market skews slightly right, and the left doesn't mind subsidizing it because they're socially reengineering it to start skewing left, and the left loves using organized warfare abroad when in power to serve ideological and personal interests. So the overall Cold War strategic posture which is now at least 30+ years out of date has become calcified and impossible to shift without major political consequences one way or the other.
When Trump tried to call out the military to suppress the communist riots in the summer of 2020, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper simply refused to follow orders.
If I wanted to destroy America, I'd have Trump re elected and then sit back and watch the chaos. The summer of 2020 is just a warm up.
Great essay, you make some points I strongly agree with. I'm not sure the Russian Federation or Ukraine would consider this a small conflict. There is significant use of airpower and artillery on both sides, and the Russian death toll now alone is greater than the American death toll in Vietnam if my wiki skills are correct (check me). You could also look at the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which has a feel of the 6 Day War to me in terms of speed and lethality of new weapons and ways of warfare.
The overall point you make about "where the real war is" is of great importance today. There are new ways war is being waged, new domains and dimensions of warfare as you point out. Whoever can understand these first will have immense first mover advantage over their adversary. I think it is possible that WWIII is absolutely possible to be fought and lost before ever having realized we are in it. Such is how narrow minded our current framework of things is. WWII was labeled as such politically, and WWI was not a World War until after the fact... The Great War conjures very different ideas to mind than The World War. I don't think this means abandoning pursuit of more traditional weapons, but it certainly entails reimagining how we think about and use those weapons... and maybe even what even is a weapon now.
Your implication that what we tend to think of as political (illegal aliens) is today a part of war absolutely resonated with me. Thanks for writing this.
A war against a major power will be in the cards as long as the regime in power remains as egotistical as it is. American leaders are always willing to test our rivals first, and this will always run the risk of scaling up.
This isn't rational decision-making, it's an endless series of provacations made by a nation with a weakening force.
Excellent piece and I agree that most of your prescriptions would be a better approach than the current one. The problem I see is that you’re looking at this from the perspective of someone that is actually interesting in providing competent defense and not wasting money and resources.
Those in power are intent on the opposite. They don’t see national defense as anything more than an economic bludgeon to be used overseas and a gravy train to ride domestically. From that perspective they’re doing exactly what they should.
Agree with everything. The only addition would be to note that it's also unlikely there would be a 'world war' ever again, with as many nations dragged into fighting a huge conflagration with another grouping of countries. If the US went to war with China, maybe that would come close, but most countries would probably just shamelessly sit it out.
So if there's no need to be prepped for ground-based WW3, then why keep the huge number of, and deployment of globally, troops.
It's certainly a sort of bribery and coercion to other countries. Japan and Germany get a huge subsidy for having tens of thousands of Americans on their soil, and some comfort level that they can underpay their defense budgets knowing Washington would never let anything happen to them.
I also think there's a part of your analysis that could use more development that Washington uses its raw troop manpower as a way to augment the forces of its vassal states. Washington has a dollar empire for economics, and then requires the vassals to field their own defense, and when they fail, that reserve force is ready to deal with insurgencies, conflicts, and small flare-ups as they arise. That might explain the reluctance to let go of the big navy and big troop counts even though, as you point out, it's all irrational otherwise.
And let's not forget the political reality that the right sees defense as the kind of welfare they can endlessly subsidize because that market skews slightly right, and the left doesn't mind subsidizing it because they're socially reengineering it to start skewing left, and the left loves using organized warfare abroad when in power to serve ideological and personal interests. So the overall Cold War strategic posture which is now at least 30+ years out of date has become calcified and impossible to shift without major political consequences one way or the other.