I wanted to write some additional points regarding the subject of how this administration, as I see it, undermines American power and what I see as the stupidity of many of their points of view:
1) With the reductions in defense, Secretary of Defense (at the time) Leon Panetta said that the U.S. military was now being reformed to where it would no longer be capable of fighting a two-front war, but instead would be capable of fighting a single-front war and holding off the enemy on a secondary front.
The problem with this is that there is no such thing. If you are fighting on one front and "holding off" the enemy on a second front, then you are fighting a two-front war. So basically it is just marketing to try and make the cuts to the military budget sound okay.
2) The Army and the Marine Corps need money. Now that the U.S. is out of Iraq and soon to be out of Afghanistan are not reasons to be cutting the Army and Marine Corps. The vehicles of these branches have been driven way beyond what their original intended service life was supposed to be, and because the soldiers had to bolt on a whole lot of armor onto them, this added a whole lot of wear-and-tear to the vehicles that they weren't supposed to have.
A rough analogy would be you are a business buy a fleet of vans that you intend to put about 100,000 miles a piece on. But then due to circumstances you didn't plan on, you end up having to put about 400,000 to 500,000 miles on each van and you also have to do so while loading each van up constantly with a lot of additional weight. Obviously you would want to replace or at least refurbish your vans after having used them so much. But instead imagine that your budget gets cut severely, so you have to make due with these vans. This is the condition of many of the vehicles of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps.
The Marine Corps in particular can be hard hit here as they already make due with older equipment. In the Gulf War in 1991, the Army went in with Abrams tanks. The Marines had Abrams tanks, but also went in with the old M60 tanks. Later the Army has M1A2 Abrams tanks, the Marines have the M1A1s. The Army gets the M2A3s and the Marines get the M1A2s. And so forth. The Marines use an older model of gas mask then the Army as well. One can only imagine the wear-and-tear that their vehicles and equipment have been put through.
3) There is a belief among many that we should not spend much on defense because it takes the place of investing in society. But this really isn't true. The reality is that the research and development into science and technology for defense purposes is responsible for a great deal of the technology we have today. The first computers were created as a result of the defense budget. The use, and hence development, of transistors was used as a result of the defense budget (vacuum tubes were far less expensive). The Internet was also created as a result of the defense budget. Many advancements in materials science as well are due to the defense budget. Much also is from the Space Program as well, which was an enormous (probably the most enormous) investment in research and development of science and technology in human history.
Even now, military funding of research into various technologies, such as computer technology, continues to have spillover effects into regular society. So investment in the defense budget need not be something in place of investment in society. The investment in science and technology R&D done for defense is adopted by the private sector to create new industries and hence new economic growth.
4) Most liberal democracies are weak. We often like to think of authoritarian countries as weak, but this depends. The nations of Europe are debt-laden, militarily weak, and selfish, and not capable of standing up to the Russian menace on their own. South Korea is not capable of standing up to North Korea on its own. Japan will struggle most likely to stand up to China on its own, and Taiwan is not capable of standing up to China with the Chinese rapidly modernizing their military. Thus the importance of American primacy and power.
5) The administration has made some very bizarre statements in my opinion on foreign policy issues:
President Obama said in a speech once that, "No nation can or should dominate another." No nation can dominate another? Is he unaware of the entirety of human history?
John Kerry said that, "Russia is behaving in a 19th century manner in a 21st century world." (paraphrase) --- does Kerry really think that because we are in the 21st century, that countries are all supposed to behave in some "enlightened" manner where they no longer behave in the same ways they always have behaved?
John Kerry then said a few days later, "The president may have his version of history, but I believe that he and Russia, for what they have done, are on the wrong side of history.”
--- what on Earth is the "wrong side of history?" What does that even mean? Were the barbarians on the "wrong side of history" when they brought down the Western Roman Empire officially in 476 CE? Were the Ottomon Turks on the "wrong side of history" when thye captured Constantinople in 1453 AD and ended the Byzantine empire, which had existed unto itself (the Eastern Roman Empire) for an additional thousand years? Was Hitler on the "wrong side of history?"
Now Obama is communicating to Putin that he (Obama) is reasonable and so forth, as if that is going to stop a man like Putin. I do wonder about the logic (or lack there of) of the apparent thinking that comes from this administration.
6) Vice President Joe Biden visited Poland today to emphasize that if Putin tries to invade any of the countries beyond Ukraine, that the U.S. will use force to stop it. But as I see it, there's one major flaw with this threat: the U.S. doesn't have the ability to project any real force in Europe as President Obama removed the heavy armor portion of the Army in Europe, something that had been a mainstay since the end of WWII, because of this (in my opinion extremely naive and ridiculous) mindset that major land wars are a thing of the past and that the big Army is a Cold War relic that we can gut, that future war will primarily be Special Operations and drones on terrorists and using the Navy to counter China, where Obama wanted to "pivot" to.
How exactly is the U.S. supposed to counter a Russian land invasion when we do not have any heavy armor capability in Europe? If the Russians invade, they're going to bring armor, and the U.S. will likely be hard-pressed to stop it without our own. Obama has essentially rendered the United States a paper tiger in Europe. I wonder if the U.S.'s not having any armor in Europe factored into Putin's calculations on taking Crimea and his possible future moves. Amazing how only about two years after we remove the armor from Europe, now we need it. Putin, as said in the previous blog post, is an example of how the threat of serious conflict can seemingly spring up out of nowhere, and of how weakness invites aggression.
Many had claimed that maintaining a serious military presence in Europe was a thing of the past, a relic of the Cold War. Some claimed that NATO itself is a Cold War relic. Where they get the idea for either of these I find very puzzling, because Russia never evolved into say another version of West Germany after World War II, i.e. a liberal democracy, and one that focused on teaching the flaws of the prior government. By the 1950s, for example, West German school textbooks were teaching about the evils of the Nazi regime. But Russia? Instead, Russia possesses a population that to a good degree now pines for the old soviet days with nostalgia. The country is rife with extreme corruption, it is a sham democracy with a government that consists of holdovers from the old Soviet days.
In some ways, it is questionable even whether the Soviet Union ever even really ended. World War I was the "war to end all wars." Then roughly twenty years later, World War II occurred. Well the Cold War "officially" ended in 1991. About twenty years pass, and because of this, "experts" decide to claim that things like NATO and a strong U.S. military presence in Europe are "relics" and something of the past. What they base this on was just the belief that Russia would never be a serious threat, despite the fact that the views of the Russian population and people like Putin should have shown otherwise. We may well discover that the Cold War never ended but merely had a roughly two-decade lapse, just like the time between World War I and World War II.
The Russian Empire is the Russian Empire, whether the old pre-Soviet Tsar variant, or the Soviet Empire (which was unto itself just an old-fashioned Russian empire), or the new attempts by Putin to rebuild a variant of Russian empire. The point is the notion that Russia ever stopped being a threat is clearly nonsense. The notion that major land wars are a thing of the past is a premature view and the view thus that the major conventional land warfare military is a relic of the past is also a premature view.
Some have said that the U.S. needs to enact strong sanctions on Russia (with real teeth, not the joke sanctions Obama has enacted right now), send weapons and supplies to Ukraine so they can fight a Putin invasion, and re-instate the missile defense in Eastern Europe as Putin hates this and it can undermine his power in the long term. But I would add a fourth suggestion: re-instate the heavy armor into Europe. And not just two Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) as were previously there, but perhaps look into adding an additional one or two, so a total of three or four BCTs. The U.S. needs to have the capability to fight a land war with Russia. Not because such a war is desirable, the complete opposite: that having such a capability will serve as a major deterrent to Russian aggression in the region.
Russia does not have a strong military and their economy is a joke. To the extent it has any wealth, it is primarily from natural resources. Russia's military does not have anywhere near the professionalism, skill, and capability of the U.S. military, so a strong U.S. military presence in Europe would be a serious-deterrent to Russia. Russia would know that it not only is faced with fighting a world-class military from a much economically stronger country, but also a military that is already combat-hardened and seasoned from a decade of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is how to achieve peace through strength.
Trying to appease the crocodile will not work.
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