US Arms May be Obsolete, Forces Stretched Thin, Strategic Blindspot?

Pentagon Warns US Arms May be Obsolete – Sarah Baxter, The Times.

America’s traditional means of projecting power abroad is growing “increasingly obsolete” and its billion-dollar military hardware could be as ineffectual against future threats as the heavily fortified Maginot line was in defending France against the Nazis, a senior Pentagon adviser has warned.

In a wake-up call to US military chiefs, Andrew Krepinevich, a leading architect of the counter-insurgency strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, argues that the Pentagon is ill-equipped to counter rising powers such as China, hostile states such as Iran, the threat from irregular forces such as Hezbollah, and terrorists such as Al-Qaeda. It is also wasting billions on weaponry that could be outdated before it rolls off the production line.

In an interview, Krepinevich said the military, like many bureaucracies, was in danger of “drinking its own bathwater” and discounting new challenges, including the proliferation of precision-guided weapons and threats from space and cyberspace. Last week Robert Gates, the defence secretary, rewarded him for his prescience with a seat on the influential defence policy board at the Pentagon.

Aircraft carriers, navy destroyers, short-range fighter aircraft and forward bases such as Guam and Okinawa in the Pacific Ocean are becoming increasingly vulnerable to technology and tactics being developed by America’s rivals, Krepinevich argues in the July issue of Foreign Affairs…

More at The Times.

The Pentagon’s Wasting Assets – Andrew Krepinevich Jr., Foreign Affairs.

The military foundations of the United States’ global dominance are eroding. For the past several decades, an overwhelming advantage in technology and resources has given the US military an unmatched ability to project power worldwide. This has allowed it to guarantee US access to the global commons, assure the safety of the homeland, and underwrite security commitments around the globe. US grand strategy assumes that such advantages will continue indefinitely. In fact, they are already starting to disappear.

Several events in recent years have demonstrated that traditional means and methods of projecting power and accessing the global commons are growing increasingly obsolete — becoming “wasting assets,” in the language of defense strategists. The diffusion of advanced military technologies, combined with the continued rise of new powers, such as China, and hostile states, such as Iran, will make it progressively more expensive in blood and treasure – perhaps prohibitively expensive – for US forces to carry out their missions in areas of vital interest, including East Asia and the Persian Gulf. Military forces that do deploy successfully will find it increasingly difficult to defend what they have been sent to protect. Meanwhile, the US military’s long-unfettered access to the global commons – including space and cyberspace – is being increasingly challenged.

Recently, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates argued in these pages for a more “balanced” US military, one that is better suited for the types of irregular conflicts now being waged in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, he also cautioned, “It would be irresponsible not to think about and prepare for the future.” Despite this admonition, US policymakers are discounting real future threats, thereby increasing the prospect of strategic surprises. What is needed is nothing short of a fundamental strategic review of the United States’ position in the world – one similar in depth and scope to those undertaken in the early days of the Cold War…

More at Foreign Affairs.

Obama’s Strategic Blind Spot – Andrew Bacevich, Los Angeles Times opinion.

‘Are there not other alternatives than sending our armies to chew barbed wire in Flanders?” During the bitter winter of 1914-15, the first lord of the Admiralty posed this urgent question to Britain’s prime minister.

The eighth anniversary of 9/11, now fast approaching, invites attention to a similar question: Are there not other alternatives than sending our armies to choke on the dust of Iraq and Afghanistan?

A comparable failure of imagination besets present-day Washington. The Long War launched by George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11 has not gone well. Everyone understands that. Yet in the face of disappointment, what passes for advanced thinking recalls the Churchill who devised Gallipoli and godfathered the tank: In Washington and in the field, a preoccupation with tactics and operations have induced strategic blindness.

As President Obama shifts the main US military effort from Iraq to Afghanistan, and as his commanders embrace counterinsurgency as the new American way of war, the big questions go not only unanswered but unasked. Does perpetuating the Long War make political or strategic sense? As we prepare to enter that war’s ninth year, are there no alternatives?

More at The Los Angeles Times.

US Armed Forces Stretched Thin – Richard Halloran, Washington Times opinion.

Today, US forces are smaller and stretched even further around the world. The US base at Bagram, Afghanistan, for instance, is halfway around the world from the center of the 48 contiguous states near Lebanon, Kan. On any given day, about one-third of the armed forces are deployed abroad.

Moreover, on Independence Day, America’s military stretch was aggravated by national political and economic turmoil. In its 233rd year, it would seem the nation is badly in need of retrenchment – not a retreat into the isolation of yesteryear, but a step back to take a deep breath, reflect a bit and sort out priorities…

In foreign policy, priorities really need sorting out. Precedence should go to long-neglected relations with Canada and Mexico and, by extension, Central America. With 5,000 miles of undefended Northern and Southern borders, the United States must have friends across those borders.

Beyond that, the United States should give priority to alliances with Britain, Australia and Japan, the island nations off the Eurasian land mass. India, the subcontinent cut off from Eurasia by mountains, desert and jungle, is a likely candidate to be added to that group. Israel, with which the U.S. has long had special ties, rates high priority.

More at The Washington Times.