To provide for the safety and well-being of our republic, we don't need further enhancements to jointness, combined arms tactics, flexible leadership, and responsive logistics. Instead, we need an entirely different approach to national security.
Come Home, America, Before It's Too Late
Given the precarious state of American democracy, aptly described by President Biden in his recent address in Philadelphia, our most pressing priority is repairing the damage to our domestic political fabric, not engaging in another round of "great power competition" dreamed up by fevered minds in Washington. Put simply, the Constitution is more important than the fate of Taiwan.
I apologize: I know that I have blasphemed. But the times suggest that we weigh the pros and cons of blasphemy. With serious people publicly warning about the possible approach of civil war and many of our far-too-well armed fellow citizens welcoming the prospect, perhaps the moment has come to reconsider the taken-for-granted premises that have sustained U.S. national security policy since the immediate aftermath of World War II.
More blasphemy! Did I just advocate a policy of isolationism?
Heaven forfend! What I would settle for instead is a modicum of modesty and prudence, along with a lively respect for (rather than infatuation with) war.
Here is the unacknowledged bind in which the Pentagon has placed itself " and the rest of us: by gearing up to fight (however ineffectively) anywhere against any foe in any kind of conflict, it finds itself prepared to fight nowhere in particular. Hence, the urge to extemporize on the fly, as has been the pattern in every conflict of ours since the Vietnam War. On occasion, things work out, as in the long-forgotten, essentially meaningless 1983 invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada. More often than not, however, they don't, no matter how vigorously our generals and our troops apply the principles of jointness, combined arms, leadership, and logistics.
Americans spend a lot of time these days trying to figure out what makes Vladimir Putin tick. I don't pretend to know, nor do I really much care. I would say this, however: Putin's plunge into Ukraine confirms that he learned nothing from the folly of post-9/11 U.S. military policy.
Will we, in our turn, learn anything from Putin's folly? Don't count on it.
Copyright 2022 Andrew Bacevich
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