Posted on 12/21/2006 7:33:11 AM PST by Valin
War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today. By Max Boot. Gotham Books, 2006, 640 pp. $35.00.
Finding the Target: The Transformation of American Military Policy. By Frederick W. Kagan. Encounter Books, 2006, 432 pp. $29.95.
The idea of a "revolution in military affairs" (RMA) based on new information technology (IT) has sparked the imagination of defense intellectuals and policymakers for nearly three decades. In that time, it has also guided a sizable chunk of the U.S. Defense Department's experiments and investments in new technology. The related but ill-defined notion of a "military transformation" even found its way into candidate George W. Bush's campaign rhetoric in 2000. And transforming the U.S. military became Donald Rumsfeld's chief goal when he was named Bush's secretary of defense after the election.
Six years later, U.S. forces are mired in Iraq, fighting valiantly but without enough forces or the right weapons and operational concepts for the job. Rumsfeld is out of a job, and many pundits blame his vision of a small, high-tech fighting force for the problems U.S. troops now confront. The RMA seems to have ended before it got very far.
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignaffairs.org ...
Elitists run off on tangents. As they did with this one. There is no substitute for a "real" traditional military capability, especially when it takes the blood, sweat and tears of a real soldier to go in and literally dig out an enemy that is killing you. As a vet of Nam, I can attest to that.
But many can theorize all they want about how to design a military -- if the military is not allowed to do its job, it makes no difference. Viet Nam could have BEEN WON in a year if the military had been able to fight it...and so Iraq (especially Baghdad) could have been cleared of hostiles well over a year ago -- but no, not with politicians worrying about what a traitorous MSM was going say, worrying about casualties rather than winning the war, worrying about getting re-elected, etc, etc.
IMHO, both Nam and Iraq have demonstrated how NOT to utilitze a military, regardless of its make up. All of it adding up to an ugly picture that would make the REAL generals of WW2 turn over in their graves.
The difference has been that information is now flowing down to soldiers, not just up to commanders.
Oh gosh this is really new thinking. Yeah right. Go read up on the US struggle to stabilize the Philippines after the locals got aggressive when the Spanish moved out. It's the same thing over and over again with us. We beat an enemy and in the vacuum that develops, indigenous people get busy catching up on their heretobefore banned religious beliefs. It's happening again in the post USSR world just like it happened in post Spanish colonial period. Same same. Read military history. We fix on a region, subdue it and move to the next region. In the Philippines we went after the gangs in the north first then moved to the Moros down south. We use a mix of benevolency and ruthlessness to carry the day. It's not the first rodeo, the Iraq stabilization process.
Sunday reading:
http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/download/csipubs/yates.pdf
US Military's experience in stability operations
I mean this seriously: are we winning?
Military transformation for its own sake is valueless. What should instead be considered is the threat.
As wonderful as technology can be, we must recognize that it, like most things, has a law of diminishing returns. If we become wholly reliant on technological mastery, then more *primitive* means of war my prove superior.
For this, I think of the worst case scenario: a land war in China. Not just an immense land mass, but the potential to have to fight a poorly-equipped army of 300 million men.
Just think of that as an axiom, and imagine the transformation our military would have to go through to fight in such a conflict.
Not ironically, there is even a Chinese proverb for such an eventuality, called The Dragon and The Rat, in which a Dragon boasts of its size, strength and ferociousness compared to the rat, but the rat summons his vast numbers of brethren which swarm and overwhelm the dragon, and consume it.
This is not a unique proverb, and is an integral part of the Chinese mythos--seen as another strategy in their playbook.
Again, I present this solely to be considered when thinking of military transformation. What is the threat?
The difference has been that information is now flowing down to soldiers, not just up to commanders.
Radical Concept Alert.
(seriously) until fairly recently it wasn't reall possible for information to move in both directions. This (IMO) is going to be the true revolution.
I think it's got to be done, whether or not we "win" in the tradional sense. We need to grind it out over there until a manageable reagion is carved out where we can set up a free enterprise zone for the rest of the region to try and get into. We need a new Berlin wall to separate the free men from the enslaved. We need picture of people making that dash to freedom to undermine the totalitarians.
we need a longer view of things, for sure. I think the Hugh Hewitt piece on the board this a.m. with Doris Kearnes Goodwin fits but most of my parallels would be to the American Revolution, as in "these are the times that try mens' souls." It was good for you to share your more recent and culturally/ situationally appropriate scholarship.
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