Reactionary measures that tinker on the margins of a fiscally unsustainable defense establishment will not rescue American military power from the budgetary Armageddon that lies ahead. American national military power is based on “capacity”, not just “capability” – capacity is dependent on economic prosperity for a sustainable tax base. America’s true power is eroding under our feet as too many Americans cling to the illusion of limitless threats and the need to preserve military power based only on today’s capabilities.It’s time for a new approach. The plan outlined in the essay: “Lean, Mean Fighting Machine,” , published in Foreign Policy.Com on 26 April 2011, is not just an accounting exercise. The plan achieves annualized savings reducing the national defense budget by 40 percent or 2.79 Trillion Dollars over ten years. It is new strategic thinking; thinking that avoids direct American military involvement in conflicts where the United States and its vital interests are not attacked and its national prosperity is not at risk. Recommended actions from the plan are highlighted below.
First, audit the Department of Defense and the armed services. This action is no less important than auditing the Federal Reserve. Before trusting anything the leadership of the Department of Defense says about “efficiencies”, “cuts” or related initiatives, Americans must know where trillions of dollars invested in defense since 2001 have actually gone and, in many cases, are still going. KEY POINT: Defense cuts without accountability mean nothing. Second, acknowledge there is no existential military threat to the U.S. or to its vital strategic interests. Scale back America’s overseas presence. Combatant commanders must be compelled to reevaluate “presence versus surge” requirements given improved long-range precision strike and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities of smart “lighter footprint” presence alternatives. These actions offer opportunities for additional savings through a modification of the current Unified Command Plan (UCP) and U.S. Code Title 10 to reduce the current number of regional and functional unified commands. KEY POINT: Cutting defense costs “from the outside in” has the beneficial side effect of preserving American investment in its own economy versus other nation’s economies. Third, recognize the United States is of necessity a global aerospace and naval power, but it is not nor does it need to be a global military power. Warfare has changed. Fewer, smarter soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines — with intelligent technology — can accomplish more than masses of troops with the brute-force tools of the past. This description points toward new Army ground forces (480,000) designed for operations of limited duration and scope, ground forces that do not beget second- and third-order budgetary effects we see in the current bloated “services and logistics” contracts; contracts that run into the billions of dollars over time. KEY POINT: Reductions in the ground force should preserve, and, where possible, increase the numbers of professional soldiers (480,000) and Marines (120,000) that can actually deploy and fight. Fourth, reduce all flag ranks in the military bureaucracy by one star effective immediately. Exceptions to this mandate would be limited to the chiefs of service, regional unified commanders, and commanders of functional commands. This action will assist in eliminating redundant single-service bureaucratic overhead and administration (uniform and civilian), especially in the setting of requirements and management of acquisitions. Also, disestablish the Armed Forces’ duplications in separate intelligence services, transferring these capabilities to national intelligence agencies — retaining only operationally unique and tactical intelligence within the branches of the Armed Forces. KEY POINT: Reduce overhead, not capability. Fifth, “right size” the Navy’s surface combatants, supporting vessels, forward deployed naval forces, and shipyards, depots and other support facilities, excluding submarines. Disband the 20-plus Marine Corps F-18 fighter jet and AV-8B Harrier jet squadrons. Marine manned aviation should be limited to an appropriate number of V-22 Ospreys or rotor-driven aircraft within new Marine Corps end-strength limits (120,000). Eliminate the F-35B version of the JSF for the Marines, especially given the disbandment of the Marine Corps jet aircraft wings. KEY POINT: Reorganize America’s three manned Air Forces — the Air Force, Navy, and Marines — into two affordable air forces; one sea-based and one land-based. Sixth, pass legislation to eliminate the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The agencies combined under DHS at the time of its inception should return to their former departments and its former national security responsibilities should shift to the Department of Defense. Defense of the nation’s borders should not be hampered by a misapplication of posse comitatus. KEY POINT: The million dollars a year it costs to keep one American soldier on station in Afghanistan makes no sense when, for a fraction of the cost, Washington could easily protect America’s borders from the wave of criminality, terrorism and illegal immigration washing in from Mexico and Latin America. Other sources of potential savings in national defense are addressed in the plan too. But what’s needed now is more political courage, not more defense spending. posted in Defense, Economy, Fiscal Responsibility, Foreign Policy, Pentagon. Many long years ago, when I was half my present age, I studied at the National War College and penned the following words as part of my thesis:
…one area where our proclivity for pat answers seems to be giving way to a more pragmatic assessment of our interests is in our reaction to Soviet Bloc aid programs. We are learning to play the influence game more economically in those countries where the objective is mainly influence, and to tolerate, perhaps even welcome, Soviet resource inputs in countries like India where the objective is mainly that of development. The rules of the influence game are simple. In effect, they say that given the client state’s propensity to maintain its independence and freedom of action, any effort to buy control over it will be very costly and also risky. Control can be defined as that point at which one patron achieves enough influence over the client to be able to manage the client’s relations with the other patron. Even if this occurs, and it almost never does, the population of the client state is likely to be so agitated over its government’s incompetence and perfidy at selling the national birthright as to render that government’s tenure dubious unless it backslides. Thus either patron can prevent the other one from gaining control at a cost that is minimal compared to the cost of gaining control itself. For better or worse, my thesis never got the circulation I thought it deserved, and was never even considered at high levels. Even now, our government seems obsessed by the notion that some real or perceived adversary is gaining influence in states we would like to regard as our clients, and that we should regard this as a threat to our vital interests. Iran, for example, is said to be moving into a strong position of influence with our former client Iraq, and this somehow translates into a mortal threat and a failure of our foreign policy. The real failure, of course, occurred nearly a decade ago when we invaded Iraq. Once that happened, certain consequences were predictable and perhaps even inevitable. Now that the consequences of our folly are playing themselves out, we should relax and recognize that when it comes to the playing field of Iraq, we are in an entirely new ball game. Instead of panicking at every signal that the new Iraqi regime is being influenced from Tehran, we should be assessing our own strengths and weaknesses in Iraq and its neighborhood, while analysing Iran’s strengths and weaknesses, both in Iraq and the region. Basically, Iraq has no desire to become a satellite of Tehran, for a variety of compelling historic and ethnic reasons. Its central purpose, now that it has gotten rid of our unwelcome military occupation, is to shore up its recently regained independence. If we can rise above the details of Baghdad politicking we can see an emerging pattern in which Iraqi leaders will be leaning either toward us or toward the Iranians, depending on which patron has the greater influence, seeking an equilibrium between us that leaves Baghdad the greatest freedom of action. It follows that either patron can achieve an increment of influence economically when it is helping Baghdad to restore its balance, while, conversely, it becomes increasingly expensive for either patron to achieve more influence when that will push Baghdad beyond what it perceives as its point of equilibrium. Of course this is a gross oversimplification, omitting as it does the Kurdish factor, oil, and any number of other complications. But it does illustrate a point that needs to be considered whenever we enter into any competitive relationship with another power, whether it be regional or global, in a third country. If that third country, call it the client state, is a real country in the sense of having a functioning government with perceived interests including its continued independence, then the foregoing rules of the influence game apply. If our goal is total dominance, including the establishment of permanent military bases, then we should figure on just flat-out conquering it, recognizing that the natives are probably going to stay in a more or less permanent state of rebellion, the neighborhood is going to be alienated, and the competing major power is going to be able to force us into expensive reactions to what will be for it low-cost annoyances. If our goal is limited to having dominant influence, the risks and costs will be less, but only somewhat. It will cost us a lot more to maintain our position than it will cost our adversary to maintain the initiative and keep us off balance, while still maintaining a significant level of influence with the client. And of course the reverse holds true, if it is the competing rival power that seeks to maintain dominance. When you add up all the cost factors of the two competing powers who are playing the influence game in country X, they are minimized when the two influences are balanced. This kind of equilibrium allows each of the powers to pursue its special interests, assuming they don’t directly conflict with those of the other power, while avoiding the extravagant overinvestments that are usually necessary when striving for a degree of influence substantially greater than the rival’s. During the Cold War we were paranoid about Soviet objectives for world domination and over-reacted when our rivals sometimes gained a toehold of influence in some far-off country by offering economic aid. This allowed the client state to actively pursue the game as an independent actor itself, in efforts to scare one power or the other into excessive investments to counter a threat to its own influence that was usually more apparent than real. That sort of situation was what I confronted when I wrote my thesis. There have been many changes since then but the basic principles of the influence game still apply. Enough theorizing. What can we infer from the foregoing as applied to our current role in the world? First, we had a multigenerational spell as world hegemon, without any serious rival, and have gotten out of the habit of balancing our capabilities against those of other states when deciding which of our goals to pursue. But it is no longer a unipolar world, and we need to start thinking of ourselves as only one of the big players, perhaps still the biggest for the moment, but that is changing. Second, our long-range strategic thinking should aim for balance of influence in many parts of the world where we now assume a need to dominate. We’ll have fewer failures and save a very large amount of our treasure if we do. If China rises as presently forecast, this approach can apply in spades to the countries on its periphery. It might even save us from finding ourselves in a ruinous conflict with that country. Third, this approach can resolve the ideological conflict within America, between those who still believe we have to be the world’s policeman, and those who say we cannot afford it, let’s retreat to Fortress America. Both sides are partly right, for yes, the world is disorderly and needs a policeman, and no, we cannot afford to carry the burden ourselves, certainly not by ourselves. There is a halfway house, and it is staring us in the face if we would only see it. We need a new strategic view based on using our influence globally to play a balancing role among competing local and regional powers. We do not need to dominate to play that role. We just need to play the influence game a lot more intelligently than we have in the recent past. Carl Coon This entry was posted in Defense, Foreign Policy, Limited Government, Pentagon. Many long years ago, when I was half my present age, I studied at the National War College and penned the following words as part of my thesis:
…one area where our proclivity for pat answers seems to be giving way to a more pragmatic assessment of our interests is in our reaction to Soviet Bloc aid programs. We are learning to play the influence game more economically in those countries where the objective is mainly influence, and to tolerate, perhaps even welcome, Soviet resource inputs in countries like India where the objective is mainly that of development. The rules of the influence game are simple. In effect, they say that given the client state’s propensity to maintain its independence and freedom of action, any effort to buy control over it will be very costly and also risky. Control can be defined as that point at which one patron achieves enough influence over the client to be able to manage the client’s relations with the other patron. Even if this occurs, and it almost never does, the population of the client state is likely to be so agitated over its government’s incompetence and perfidy at selling the national birthright as to render that government’s tenure dubious unless it backslides. Thus either patron can prevent the other one from gaining control at a cost that is minimal compared to the cost of gaining control itself. For better or worse, my thesis never got the circulation I thought it deserved, and was never even considered at high levels. Even now, our government seems obsessed by the notion that some real or perceived adversary is gaining influence in states we would like to regard as our clients, and that we should regard this as a threat to our vital interests. Iran, for example, is said to be moving into a strong position of influence with our former client Iraq, and this somehow translates into a mortal threat and a failure of our foreign policy. The real failure, of course, occurred nearly a decade ago when we invaded Iraq. Once that happened, certain consequences were predictable and perhaps even inevitable. Now that the consequences of our folly are playing themselves out, we should relax and recognize that when it comes to the playing field of Iraq, we are in an entirely new ball game. Instead of panicking at every signal that the new Iraqi regime is being influenced from Tehran, we should be assessing our own strengths and weaknesses in Iraq and its neighborhood, while analysing Iran’s strengths and weaknesses, both in Iraq and the region. Basically, Iraq has no desire to become a satellite of Tehran, for a variety of compelling historic and ethnic reasons. Its central purpose, now that it has gotten rid of our unwelcome military occupation, is to shore up its recently regained independence. If we can rise above the details of Baghdad politicking we can see an emerging pattern in which Iraqi leaders will be leaning either toward us or toward the Iranians, depending on which patron has the greater influence, seeking an equilibrium between us that leaves Baghdad the greatest freedom of action. It follows that either patron can achieve an increment of influence economically when it is helping Baghdad to restore its balance, while, conversely, it becomes increasingly expensive for either patron to achieve more influence when that will push Baghdad beyond what it perceives as its point of equilibrium. Of course this is a gross oversimplification, omitting as it does the Kurdish factor, oil, and any number of other complications. But it does illustrate a point that needs to be considered whenever we enter into any competitive relationship with another power, whether it be regional or global, in a third country. If that third country, call it the client state, is a real country in the sense of having a functioning government with perceived interests including its continued independence, then the foregoing rules of the influence game apply. If our goal is total dominance, including the establishment of permanent military bases, then we should figure on just flat-out conquering it, recognizing that the natives are probably going to stay in a more or less permanent state of rebellion, the neighborhood is going to be alienated, and the competing major power is going to be able to force us into expensive reactions to what will be for it low-cost annoyances. If our goal is limited to having dominant influence, the risks and costs will be less, but only somewhat. It will cost us a lot more to maintain our position than it will cost our adversary to maintain the initiative and keep us off balance, while still maintaining a significant level of influence with the client. And of course the reverse holds true, if it is the competing rival power that seeks to maintain dominance. When you add up all the cost factors of the two competing powers who are playing the influence game in country X, they are minimized when the two influences are balanced. This kind of equilibrium allows each of the powers to pursue its special interests, assuming they don’t directly conflict with those of the other power, while avoiding the extravagant overinvestments that are usually necessary when striving for a degree of influence substantially greater than the rival’s. During the Cold War we were paranoid about Soviet objectives for world domination and over-reacted when our rivals sometimes gained a toehold of influence in some far-off country by offering economic aid. This allowed the client state to actively pursue the game as an independent actor itself, in efforts to scare one power or the other into excessive investments to counter a threat to its own influence that was usually more apparent than real. That sort of situation was what I confronted when I wrote my thesis. There have been many changes since then but the basic principles of the influence game still apply. Enough theorizing. What can we infer from the foregoing as applied to our current role in the world? First, we had a multigenerational spell as world hegemon, without any serious rival, and have gotten out of the habit of balancing our capabilities against those of other states when deciding which of our goals to pursue. But it is no longer a unipolar world, and we need to start thinking of ourselves as only one of the big players, perhaps still the biggest for the moment, but that is changing. Second, our long-range strategic thinking should aim for balance of influence in many parts of the world where we now assume a need to dominate. We’ll have fewer failures and save a very large amount of our treasure if we do. If China rises as presently forecast, this approach can apply in spades to the countries on its periphery. It might even save us from finding ourselves in a ruinous conflict with that country. Third, this approach can resolve the ideological conflict within America, between those who still believe we have to be the world’s policeman, and those who say we cannot afford it, let’s retreat to Fortress America. Both sides are partly right, for yes, the world is disorderly and needs a policeman, and no, we cannot afford to carry the burden ourselves, certainly not by ourselves. There is a halfway house, and it is staring us in the face if we would only see it. We need a new strategic view based on using our influence globally to play a balancing role among competing local and regional powers. We do not need to dominate to play that role. We just need to play the influence game a lot more intelligently than we have in the recent past. Carl Coon 1/19/2012 By: Douglas Macgregor, PHD
Published: December 28, 2011 Through the last year the defense industries and their supporters in Congress worked overtime to ensure the federal government kept the armed forces in a perpetual procurement cycle. Inside the Pentagon, the generals and admirals who lead thedefense bureaucracies worked to minimize procurement costs. This was not altruistic behavior. It’s the only way to protect the armed forces’ outdated force structures from more debilitating cuts; cuts that threaten the single service way of warfare along with the bloated overhead of flag officer headquarters. Meanwhile, public pronouncements from the office of the Secretary of Defense on cost savings initiatives or about imminent strategic disaster if defense spending is reduced fell flat. In fact, everything in 2011 related to defense, from the controversial F-35 program to the multi-billion dollar contracting fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan, looked like window dressing designed to buy more time for an anachronistic, insolvent defense establishment. It’s no secret what’s required in 2012 and beyond: an efficient and effective organization of military power for the optimum utilization of increasingly constrained resources. More specifically, a serious audit of the U.S. Department of Defense, along with a national reset where the roles of politicians, bureaucrats and four stars are recast as servants, not masters, of the national interest. Unfortunately, inside the Beltway where accountability is a dirty word, political and military leaders are free to conflate their personal and bureaucratic interests with the national interest. As a result, there is still no willingness to comprehend or, at least, admit the truth: America’s current national security posture is fiscally unsustainable. Today, the United States’ national debt is so large it will swallow almost any legislation the President and Congress agree to pass. It is only a question of time before the U.S. government is compelled to make drastic cuts in federal spending. Despite this reality, like the politicians in both parties, the four Chiefs of Service are desperate to save the military status quo from significant reductions in defense spending, a policy stance that could easily lead to a serious degradation of American military power after the 2012 election. In the midst of America’s fiscal crisis, Congress is equally inept. The best Congress could do in this legislative season to was announce its intention to add yet another four-star (this time from the National Guard) to the Joint Chiefs of Staff; an action comparable to adding a fifth wheel to a car that’s already got four flats. Instead of adding more generals to an already top-heavy force, America’s ignominious withdrawal from Iraq should help sober up politicians of all stripes and parties. It should impart the timeless strategic lesson that the use of American military power, even against weak opponents with no navy, no army, no air force and no air defenses — can have costly, unintended strategic consequences. Today, Iran, not the United States, is the dominant power inside Iraq and Americans are beginning to understand why. Iranian interests prevailed in Baghdad because Tehran’s agents of influence wore an indigenous face while America’s agents wore foreign uniforms and carried guns. Regardless of whatever the US decides to do, Iran will remain the dominant actor in Iraq so long as it maintains even the thinnest veil of concealment behind the façade of the Maliki government and its successors. While these unassailable facts are ignored inside the Beltway, “Main Street” is figuring things out. According to a recent CBS poll 77 percent of the American electorate approves of President Obama’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. Two in three Americans say the Iraq war was not worth the cost, and only 15% of Americans support military intervention to stop Iran’s nuclear program. More important, nearly one-half of American voters now think the United States can make major cuts in defense spending without placing the country in danger. They see no risk in cutting way back on what America spends to defend other countries. The old notion that the United States should maintain expensive military bases in foreign countries, just to ensure troublesome foreigners do not get “out of hand,” is rapidly losing support. Conventional wisdom says American society’s broader consciousness is shaped by the forces of hype and publicity, and national defense is often subject to it, but the recent polling data suggest a different explanation. Americans are focused on economics, not national defense. Perhaps, the American electorate perceives the Federal Reserve is running out of ammunition to restart America’s stalled recovery? Perhaps, Americans are concerned the collapse of the Eurozone will eventually lead to a serious financial crisis in the United States, wiping out the savings of many millions of Americans? Or, perhaps Americans are worried the sudden termination of “free services” in America’s largest cities would lead to a surge in poverty and violence, putting American society on a collision course with itself. It’s hard to tell. What we can say is that Americans are signing up for President Eisenhower’s philosophy in the aftermath of the Korean War. He insisted the nation deserved both “solvency and security” in national defense. Like Eisenhower, Americans seem to understand the nation’s vital strategic interests are only secure when the United States’ scientific-industrial base is productive and our society prospers. Predictably, there is also a growing recognition that the million dollars a year it costs to keep one American soldier or Marine on station in Afghanistan makes no sense when, for a fraction of the cost, the U.S. Army and other federal agencies could easily protect America’s borders from the wave of criminality, terrorism and illegal immigration washing in from Mexico and Latin America. Looking forward into 2012, American voters seem to understand what many of the men running for President do not: Given America’s fragile economic health, 2012 is no time for uninformed decisions regarding the use of force. The deficit Americans worry most about is not fiscal; it’s a national deficit of integrity and reason. Col (ret) Douglas Macgregor, a member of AOL Defense’s Board of Contributors, is a decorated Army veteran and author of important books on military reform and strategy including, Breaking the Phalanx (Praeger, 1997), and Transformation under Fire (Praeger, 2003). He is executive vice president at Burke-Macgregor Group, LLC, in Reston, Va. Douglas Macgregor, PhD Colonel (ret) US Army This entry was posted in #Defense, #Economy, #Fiscal Responsibility, #Pentagon. In the spirit of spending wisely, here is my plan to reconfigure the military for the demands and threats of the 21st-century world and, in doing so, dramatically cut the Pentagon budget:
Estimated annualized savings resulting from withdrawals from overseas garrisons and restructuring the United States’ forward military presence: $239 billion The place to start reducing defense spending is with U.S. overseas commitments, which are vast. Lean, Mean Fighting Machine By Douglas Macgregor Today, there are more than 317,000 active-duty U.S. military personnel stationed or deployed overseas. In the Central Command theater of operations, encompassing Iraq and Afghanistan, there are approximately 180,000 active-component personnel as well as over 45,000 reservists. Approximately 150,000 active-component U.S. military personnel are officially assigned to Europe and Asia. And some estimates note that there are two civilians and supporting contractors for each service member in certain locations. The United States long stayed secure without this kind of sprawling imperial apparatus. But as the Cold War drew to a close, instead of adjusting force structure and spending to a strategic environment newly friendly to U.S. and allied interests, the U.S. military began a dramatic expansion of its overseas presence into areas where, historically, it had been episodic at best. America’s Cold War commitments, meanwhile, continued without interruption. After expelling the Iraqi Army from Kuwait in 1991, the U.S. military was directed to stay in the Persian Gulf and build massive facilities. And following the 9/11 attacks, the global war on terror resulted in major new Army and Air Force installations from Europe to Central Asia. Why does America need all these facilities? The original Cold War goal of protecting European and Asian societies from communist threats and internal subversion has long ago been met, and many overseas U.S. bases are now redundant. What better time than now, when the United States faces fiscal calamity but few real military threats, to judiciously sort those that are truly needed from those the Pentagon can live without? It’s time to declare victory and go home. Of course, the United States often has multiple aims in mind when it stations troops overseas. U.S. politicians tend to think of forward-presence forces as “critical enablers” — soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who train with the host country and others. But another, usually unstated reason for their presence is that allies want to ensure the United States automatically becomes a co-belligerent in any future regional conflict, something that made sense when America’s allies confronted an existential threat from the Soviet Union, but not today. Future conflicts won’t look like those of the Cold War. U.S. troops remained ashore in Europe and Asia long past the point when it was clear that a military presence was a needless drain on American resources. Today, new technology and a different mix of forces enables a lighter, less intrusive footprint. For instance, area control is no longer a mission that demands a large surface fleet on the World War II model. The U.S. nuclear submarine fleet augmented with fewer surface combatants employing long-range sensors, manned and unmanned aircraft, communications, and missiles can dominate the world’s oceans, ensuring the United States and its allies control access to the maritime domain that supports 91 percent of the world’s commerce. In the Islamic world, the U.S.-led interventions were and remain speculative investments with questionable returns on taxpayers’ investments. For the moment, operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and more recently over Libya, have resulted in less and less funding available to reorganize and replace obsolescent, unsustainable, or worn-out Cold War-era forces designed for aerospace, maritime superiority, and ground combat — one more reason to end or drastically reduce U.S. involvement in those conflicts as soon as possible. Fortunately, as U.S. ground forces withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq, the appeal of the Islamists’ anti-American recruiting pitch will dramatically weaken, de-escalating the conflict. International cooperation combined with effective police action, border defenses, and immigration control is a far more economical way to prevent future large-scale terrorist action. Estimated annualized savings from reorganizing the Army and Marine Corps: $18 billion The changes in America’s overseas commitments must of necessity involve reductions in force structure and personnel inside the country’s general-purpose ground forces, currently bloated by the misguided and historically disproven counterinsurgency model. While U.S. ground forces withdraw over the next three years from their overseas garrisons, Congress should establish new end-strength ceilings for the combined active strength of the Army and Marine Corps: 600,000 active-duty service members (480,000 in the Army and 120,000 Marines). As noted earlier, the proliferation of new strike weapons, conventional or nuclear, makes the massing of large ground forces extremely dangerous. Consequently, future ground combat forces must mobilize organic combat power that is disproportionate to their size and numbers and execute mobile, distributed, yet coherent joint operations. This description points toward Army and Marine ground forces designed for operations of limited duration and scope, forces that can be organized, trained, and equipped at far lower cost than mass armies created for long-term territorial occupation that beget second- and third-order budgetary effects we see in the current bloated “services and logistics” contracts, contracts that run into the billions of dollars over time. Reductions in ground forces should also preserve and, where possible, increase the numbers of professional soldiers and Marines who can actually deploy and fight. This force transition must also be accompanied by an overall reduction in redundant or unnecessary overhead, support, and services force structure to increase the tooth-to-tail ratio and operational returns on military investments In a fiscally constrained environment, the country must re-examine the roles and missions of its land warfare services — the Army and Marine Corps. Reorganizing the manpower and capabilities in these large forces within an integrated, joint operational framework to provide a larger pool of ready, deployable ground forces on rotational readiness that can perform a range of missions is essential. Estimated annualized savings from reductions in naval surface forces and Marine fixed-wing aviation: $10 billion Command of the sea, which today includes the air and space above the surface and the water beneath it, is still the precondition for the exercise of effective influence beyond U.S. borders. Fortunately, there is no other power in the world that is able, or likely to be able, in the next quarter-century to build a fleet that could seriously challenge U.S. naval supremacy. This includes China. However, the Navy needs a different mix of capabilities than it had during the last years of the Cold War, a mix based on reconfigured strike platforms, new platforms, and manned and unmanned submersibles with an increasingly deep operational focus. Ideally, the mix should include fewer giant aircraft carriers and more flexible ships — ships that are more easily sustained “forward” without the support of friendly, modern, deep-water harbors to improve operational agility and flexibility. These points suggest Congress should direct the reduction of the Navy’s surface fleet from 11 to eight carrier battle groups over a period of 36 months and rebalance their home porting in acknowledgement of national priorities in the Pacific Command and Central Command areas of responsibility. This action would include concurrent “right-sizing” of all associated combatants, supporting vessels, forward deployed naval forces, and shipyards, depots, and other support facilities, excluding submarines. Combatant commanders should be directed to re-evaluate “presence versus surge” naval requirements given improved long-range precision strike and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities of smart presence alternatives. Simultaneously, the Department of the Navy should be directed to disband the 20-plus Marine Corps F-18 fighter jet and AV-8B Harrier jet squadrons. Retire all the AV-8Bs and the older F/A-18s, retaining the newer F/A-18C/Ds and EA-6Bs until replaced with Navy aircraft. Reassign the carrier Marines to naval air groups until the remaining Marine jets are retired; and require the Marine Corps to call on the Navy and Air Force for tactical fixed-wing air cover. Marine manned aviation should be limited to an appropriate number of V-22 Ospreys or rotor-driven aircraft within the new end-strength limits. This approach enables reorganization of the United States’ three manned air forces — the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps — into two affordable air forces, one sea-based and one land-based. Estimated annualized savings from eliminating the F-35B: $2.5 billion Between 2003 and 2009, the U.S. Air Force cut 160 fighter/attack and 19 bombers from its active component. As a result of authorization bills in 2010, the Air Force will be required to retire about 300 older F-15, F-16, and A-10 aircraft without replacements until 2015. The cuts mandated as part of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) will probably result in the loss of a few more bombers. Further cuts in U.S. aerospace power would seem ill-advised given the need to rely on air power during America’s withdrawal from its overseas commitments. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program, however, bears serious re-examination. At an average $92 million per plane, the JSF is very expensive for the capabilities it promises versus the performance it has delivered to date. In practical terms, the JSF is an investment issue. Will Congress flush $44 billion of investment down the drain when the U.S. Armed Forces stand to receive at least some number of aircraft that are more capable than the very old F-16s and early-model F/A-18s? On the other hand, scaling back the complexity and size of the total buy is very reasonable and still saves a great deal of money. One way is to eliminate the F-35B version of the JSF for the Marines, especially given the disbandment of the Marine Corps jet aircraft wings. The development of a naval unmanned deep-penetrating strike capability mitigates operational risk in this approach. Estimated annualized savings from reducing the number of unified commands and single service headquarters: $1 billion Withdrawal of most of U.S. garrison forces (particularly its ground forces) from overseas will necessitate the elimination of many military commands. It also offers opportunities for savings through a modification of the current Unified Command Plan and U.S. Code Title 10 to reduce the current number of regional and functional unified commands from six to four. U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Southern Command would remain, but Mexico would fall into Southern Command’s area of responsibility. U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command should be reintegrated and relocated to the facilities formerly used by U.S. Joint Forces Command in Hampton Roads, Virginia, to be renamed U.S. Atlantic Command. Then, Central Command should be divided between Atlantic Command and Pacific Command by the end of fiscal 2012. This approach would eliminate the four-star combatant command headquarters outside the United States and negate the flow-down justification of three-star and four-star single-service component commands aligned within, an action that is long overdue along with the deflation of the services’ general officer/admiral rank structure. As Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn notes, each of these commands have become beset by “requirements creep” without regard to the cost of capability, a pernicious effect of having so many people “in charge,” demanding staff, resources, and authorities commensurate with their rank, instead of what the country needs. In response to these actions, Congress should reduce all flag ranks in the bureaucracy by one star effective immediately. Exceptions to this mandate would be limited to the chiefs of service, regional unified commanders, and commanders of functional commands. Combined with the reduction in command overhead, this will assist in eliminating redundant single-service bureaucratic overhead and administration (uniform and civilian), especially in the setting of requirements and management of acquisitions. Again, U.S. Code Title 10 must be modified through new legislation to prevent continued duplication and inefficiency created by competitive bureaucracies. Simplified command structures that emphasize responsibility and accountability are always the keys to success in crisis or conflict. Estimated annualized savings from eliminating the Department of Homeland Security and restructuring national intelligence and the Army National Guard: $7 billion Inside the United States, it’s time to consider legislation eliminating the inefficient experiment that is the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The agencies combined under DHS at the time of its inception should return to their former departments, and its former national security responsibilities should shift to the Defense Department. Some may argue that this is not the role of the Pentagon. But the defense of the country includes land and sea borders — and employing the armed forces to secure those borders from threats originating in the nexus between transnational criminal and violent extremist organizations is explicitly stated in the preamble and Article I of the U.S. Constitution’s language of the “common defence.” Defense of the country’s borders should not be hampered by a misapplication of posse comitatus, the prohibition on armed forces conducting law enforcement. It also makes sense to begin disestablishing most of the armed forces’ duplications in separate intelligence services, transferring these capabilities to national intelligence agencies — retaining only operationally unique and tactical intelligence within the branches of the armed forces. Intelligence and related “black” programs have exploded in costs post-9/11 with dubious returns on these investments. In addition, new federal legislation should be considered that prohibits the Army and Air National Guard from mobilizing for deployment beyond the borders of the United States — except in the event of a formal declaration of war. Once this legislation is on the books, the Army National Guard should discard most of its war-fighting equipment and convert its formations to a light, wheeled constabulary force designed for border security and domestic emergency/disaster relief inside the United States. Estimated annualized savings from reducing political appointees and changing acquisition and military education: $2 billion Other sources of potential savings in national defense exist and should be pursued. Given the current fiscal pressure, the Defense Department should consider affordable alternatives to meet threat requirements in the Air and Missile Defense portfolio. One option is to cancel the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS). The Affordable Near-Term Patriot solution is less than 10 percent of the projected $18 billion MEADS cost. Congress should explore a one-third reduction in the number of political appointees to the Defense Department. In most cases, these appointees simply build larger bureaucratic empires underneath them to justify their activities. It would also help to disestablish service component acquisition executives, the individual service bureaucrats who buy equipment and services for the use of their respective services (Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps), and combine these staffs under the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics and legislatively abolish service-centric acquisition autonomy. It is disappointing how many times competing “service equities” are raised in arguments that end up trumping national strategic interests within the Pentagon. Fragmented acquisition authorities, granting a degree of autonomy to each service, are the principle enabler of this bad, inefficient behavior. Finally, it is high time the armed forces consolidated the single-service war colleges into one integrated national defense college. At the same time, Congress should implement a merit-based selection system that requires examinations for entry, as well as graduation. Military education is expensive — and officers should be held accountable for their performance in it. This action would also set the tone for a much-needed reform movement to hold officers accountable across a range of military activities. Joint professional military education should not be a “check the box” exercise or an opportunity to lower one’s golf handicap. It should prepare future senior military leaders and weed out those who are intellectually and professionally incapable of meeting the challenge to perform. #Defense, #Foreign Policy, #Macgregor The president's incredibly imperialist wielding of executive power.
By Bruce Fein President Barack ObamaPresident Barack Obama's claim to czarlike powers in a perpetual global war against international terrorism has been blunted by a judicial appointee of former President George W. Bush. Last week, in the case Fadi al Maqaleh, United States District Judge John D. Bates denied that President Obama could make suspected "enemy combatants" disappear into the Bagram Theater Internment Facility at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan without an opportunity for exoneration. (While President Obama has abandoned the term enemy combatant for Guantanamo Bay detainees, he has retained the label for detainees held elsewhere.) Bates' ruling is a welcome check on an emerging pattern of mightily expansive claims of executive authority by the new administration. In early February, President Obama sought another imperial power before the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in the case Mohammed v. Jeppesen Dataplan. The complaint alleged that the plaintiffs had been seized by American personnel, taken to airports, stripped, blindfolded, shackled to the floor of a Gulfstream V, and taken to destination countries for torture and harsh incarceration. The District Court dismissed the complaint because then-President Bush and Vice President Cheney argued that state secrets would be exposed if the case were litigated. During oral argument before the 9th Circuit, Obama echoed the state-secrets argument made by Bush and Cheney. Similarly, the president who promised "change" is wielding the tool of state secrets in aiming to dismiss, without the gathering of evidence, challenges to the National Security Agency's Terrorist Surveillance Program, which entailed warrantless phone or e-mail interceptions of American citizens on American soil in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. This defense has failed before Judge Vaughn R. Walker in early rounds of the litigation. And, again, the state-secrets privilege is the administration's response, if ancillary to a defense of retroactive immunity, in a brief filed last week to the efforts of the Electronic Frontier Foundation to sue Bush administration officials for the NSA's wiretapping. In principle, President Obama is maintaining that victims of constitutional wrongdoing by the U.S. government should be denied a remedy to prevent the American people and the world at large from learning of the lawlessness perpetrated in the name of national security and exacting political and legal accountability. Thus Mahar Arar, who was tortured by Syrian agents, allegedly with the complicity of U.S. intelligence or immigration agents, has been denied a judicial remedy, again based on the state-secrets rule, to hide the identifies of his U.S. government persecutors. Similarly, victims of torture authorized by the president or vice president would encounter the state-secrets bar if they sought redress. Disclosing the methods of torture, the government has argued, might enable al-Qaida detainees to prepare better psychologically or physically to resist the criminal abuse! Such reasoning more befits the pages of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago than the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in ex parte Milligan: "The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government." In the Bagram Prison litigation, Judge Bates summoned the observation of Alexander Hamilton writing in The Federalist 84: "[C]onfinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government." Accordingly, he held that enemy combatant detainees at Bagram who were captured outside Afghanistan and who were not Afghan citizens could challenge the constitutionality of their detentions in federal courts through writs of habeas corpus. If President Obama had embraced the principles of a republic (which cares about injustice) instead of the arrogance of empire (which admires swagger), neither the habeas corpus nor state-secrets litigation would have been necessary. In the former case, four detainees held at Bagram for six years or more filed petitions in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia assailing the legality of their incarcerations based solely on the president's assertion that they were "enemy combatants." That concept—as defined by President Obama—sweeps far beyond persons accused of directly aiding or participating in hostilities against the United States. It includes persons who "supported hostilities in aid of enemy forces," which might encompass the provision of food, medicines, or trousers. The detainees had been captured in Tunisia, Thailand, Dubai, and an unknown location outside Afghanistan. One was an Afghan citizen, two were Yemenis, and one was Tunisian. President Obama ratified the following charade to make "enemy combatant" determinations at Bagram, which can be the equivalent of life sentences. The initial judgment is made "in the field." It is reviewed within 75 days, and then at six-month intervals. The reviewing body is the Unlawful Enemy Combatant Review Board, a panel of three commissioned officers. It examines "all relevant information reasonably available." The detainee is denied access to a personal representative or lawyer. He is denied access to the government's evidence. He is denied an opportunity to respond in person. He is limited to submitting a written statement without knowledge of either his accusers or the allegations that must be rebutted. After its sham hearing, the UECRB makes a recommendation by majority vote to the commanding general as to whether the detainee is an "enemy combatant." The Bagram procedures are descendents of the Spanish Inquisition. The executive branch decrees that "enemy combatant" status justifies detention, enforces the decree through executive detentions, and decides whether its enforcement decisions are correct. That combination was what the Founding Fathers decried as the "very definition of tyranny" in The Federalist 47. In addition, the incriminating evidence and accusers are secret. And the judges are military persons the detainee is accused of hoping to kill, which probably compromises their putative impartiality. President Obama's claim of wartime necessity as justifying constitutional shortcuts is unpersuasive. The United States granted accused war criminals captured in the China Theater a particularized statement of charges and a rigorous adversarial process, noted by the United States Supreme Court in the 1950 case Eisentrager v. Johnson. As regards state secrets, the government can always accept a default judgment, meaning an acceptance of liability for alleged injuries, if it wishes to preserve vital intelligence sources and methods. The government confronts the same choice in criminal cases—i.e., either to disclose classified information necessary for a fair trial or to drop the prosecution. President Obama pledged to restore the rule of law. But the state-secrets-privilege wars with that promise. It encourages torture, kidnappings, inhumane treatment, and similar abuses, all carried out in the name of fighting international terrorism. That encouragement is compounded by the president's adamant opposition to criminal prosecution of former or current government officials for open and notorious abuses—for example, water-boarding or illegal surveillance. His stances on habeas corpus and state secrets flout twin verities of Justice Louis D. Brandeis: Sunshine is the best disinfectant; and, when the government becomes a lawbreaker, it invites every man to become a law unto himself. Slate |
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