Politics in America

I know I advertise this blog as mainly a defense review venture but I would like to make a brief post regarding politics in America.  Right off the bat I will tell you that I am a lean-right person.  I consider myself a conservative but I would say I am much closer to the center then I am to the far right.  I believe in the sanctity of the Constitution (no “living document” bs here), fiscal responsibility, a robust but practical military, free-markets but with appropriate regulations, and a federal government that isn’t intrusive into every aspect of people’s lives.

So what exactly does that make me?  I will confess that of late I have often felt that no political party really represents me.  The Republican Party certainly is the lesser of two evils for me but I feel as though they no longer truly stand for their stated principles.  It is hard to support them as the party of fiscal responsibility when they have failed so spectacularly at that goal in recent years.  Additionally, how you can you get excited about a party with leadership like they have right now?  When I see personalities such as John Boehner, Michael Steele, and Mitch McConnell  I don’t see the type of leaders who will make people want to follow them, which I believe is the mark of a great leader.  As much as I could sit all day and talk about how much I disagree with almost all of Barack Obama’s policies (kudos on the Predator strikes in Af-Pak though), he was charismatic and bold. (I use was intentionally, I believe he has devolved into a much worse personality in the WH or maybe he was just good at hiding it before)

I will admit that there are certainly very articulate, bright, and principled politicians in government today, and I don’t confine that to Republicans strictly either because I believe there are plenty of moderate Democrats who also embody these principles.  Paul Ryan from Wisconsin is one such politician (R) who should receive more attention.  He is quietly building a reputation as being one of the most intelligent voices on a variety of issues, most notably on reducing the deficit.

Sarah Palin on the other hand could disappear tomorrow and I could not be happier.  How a woman who has consistently displayed an utter lack of knowledge on all issues of foreign policy and seems only capable of appealing to a select, albeit large, group by using the simplest of ideas repetitively truly baffles me.  You hear liberals continually talk about republican “plants” such as the recent Alvin Greene case.  If I were a conspiracy theorist (it’s a coincidence the helicopters are black?) I would be bold enough to presume that Sarah Palin could only be a liberal plant because she is such a caricature of everything liberals like to decry conservatives over.  I would also like to add Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to that list.  They certainly serve a purpose by acting as a counterbalance to what is rightly assumed to be a liberal bias in media.  However, far too many people elevate them to the level of deities and will blindly accept their simple talking points without regard for verifying the truth of what they say.

Well that  was only a little of what I wanted to get off my chest but I feel like I am ranting a bit.  Please feel free to comment if you agree or disagree with me.

The First: Adapting Security for the 21st Century

Priorities

1.)    Adopt a more specific, agile, and focused stance on defining which groups/individuals are threats.  Avoid generalizations.

2.)    Re-evaluate the way which we fight wars, and consequently re-evaluate the tools/systems we use to fight these wars.

3.)    Recognize the nature of the threat we fact.  We cannot create a solution to a problem if we do not accurately perceive the problem.

1.)    “If you target air as your primary threat, you will find enemies everywhere you look.”

There has been an ill-advised strategy, starting soon after 9/11 with the coining of the term “Global War on Terror”, to throw out blanket of accusation again a wide swath of groups. It would have seemed natural to declare Al’Qaida as the primary enemy of the United States following the attacks of 9/11, and it would not have been entirely ill-advised to go slightly further and cite the Takfiri elements of Islam as part of this threat.  This approach is advantageous because it allows for a focused and specific approach.  Military elements and intelligence agencies are able to focus their attention on threats that have been proven.  However, by stating that we are engaged in a “War on Terror” we are essentially including every single group or individual who has potential to create “terror”, whether that is a direct threat to the United States or not.  This strategy will make a response chaotic and scattered at best.

The world of the 21^st century is complex and intricate, full of minutiae and subtlety.  Globalization has only deepened this fact and amplified its effects.  Any successful security strategy must realize these trends and plan accordingly.

2.)     “Modern armies must become the Impressionists of war, using the tools of the cold war but adapting them for a new paradigm.”

As the US military has learned painfully slowly in Iraq and Afghanistan, the massive military capabilities developed during the Cold War and continually perfected in following years are ill-equipped to deal with the major threats facing us today.  The conventional dominance of our forces is such that no known nation-state, or combination of nation-states, could hope to defeat us in a conventional battle.  However, such as is plainly laid out in The Utility of Force, our enemies are not static objects but rather smart, adaptive peoples who when faced with an insurmountable advantage, choose simply to not play by our rules.

Contrary to some opinions in the defense industry, the time of the ground combat as not ended but rather shifted.  It is true that the world is unlikely to see a conventional clash of developed nation-states in the near future.  Nuclear weapons and the interconnectedness of the global economy would make any such efforts a fool’s errand.  This reality begs the question then, which weapons systems subsequently become tactically useless.  In a world where developed state-to-state conflict is a near impossibility, the high-tech conventional weapons systems meant to battle states on equal technological footing are rendered obsolete.  Main battle tanks, air superiority fighters, heavy artillery, and many maritime vehicles have little utility in this modern landscape.  Why then, do we maintain these systems at exorbitant cost to our country?

There are numerous reasons for this but two are of particular salience.  The first is that there will always be those entrenched within the defense community who perceive conflicts on the horizon (hypothetical threats if you will) that demand the purchase of weapons systems.  One particularly clear example is that of national missile defense system.   A vestige of the Cold War that even during that period had limited effectiveness , the continued calls for investing billions of dollars in such a system are “justified” by the hypothetical threat that missiles could strike the U.S.   This argument flies in the face of both the strategic stances of missile systems around the world and is ignorant of the technical particulars of modern ballistic missiles.     Why invest billions in a system to protect against ballistic missiles (especially when modern ones possess decoys and countermeasures that easily defeat defense systems) when cruise missiles and unmanned drones are cost-effective, harder to defend against, and equally effective.

The other reason is that high-tech, conventional weapons bring a plethora of manufacturing jobs to the country and it is often political suicide to argue for reforms that would fire thousands of Americans.  The security threats we face today are effectively combatted by linguists, special forces, and civilian contractors; but they don’t bring money to congressional campaigns and they can’t be created on an assembly line.