"Eight Ways In Which The US Army Is Strategically Unique" Topic

"When President Obama addressed the graduating class at West Point on May 28, he was speaking to the future leadership of a military service that is having a hard time defining its place in national strategy. There was no need to dwell on that question for a dozen years after the 9-11 attacks — over two-thirds of the casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan were soldiers — but now those wars are nearly ended, the White House is shifting its strategic focus to the Pacific, and the President says non-military options are the preferred way of dealing with security challenges. Ground forces will still have a role to play in this emerging landscape, but the political culture looks more favorably disposed to the light footprint and fleeting presence of the Marine Corps.

Army efforts to articulate a compelling vision of its future are hampered by two obstacles. First, many politicians and policymakers don't want to know the truth about what the future may hold for the joint force. Just as Washington avoids talking about the inevitability of nuclear deterrence one day failing, so it doesn't want to discuss the possibility that tomorrow's worst nightmares might find sanctuary in the back alleys of Cairo or Karachi — where we will have to go and root them out. Second, the Army has an inferiority complex about talking to policy elites hailing from Harvard, so it tries to dress up military imperatives in pretentious jargon that undercuts their urgency.

Thus the Army message is a bit muddled, and as a result it is taking disproportionate cuts in Washington's budget wars just as it took disproportionate casualties in overseas contingencies. Most of its major modernization initiatives for replacing Reagan-era combat systems have died, its active-duty force structure is shrinking fast, and Chief of Staff Ray Odierno recently told Congress his service is less ready to fight today than it was on the eve of 9-11. Clearly, the Army needs to do a better job of explaining what the consequences of demobilization might be. With that in mind, I'd like to offer a partial list of ways in which the Army is strategically unique — in other words, a compendium of essential missions that only the Army can perform in support of national strategy. If the Army is allowed to wither, these are the capabilities America will lose…"
Full article here
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Amicalement
Armand

and the President says non-military options are the preferred way of dealing with security challenges.

You know, I think thats the policy line the last couple of Roman Emperors took too…..Apparently the Barbarians weren't quite as impressed with the jargon as the chattering classes though….

The real question should be what does the US Air Force, indeed any Air Force, do that the Army and Navy can't do, and did do, better?

Good question my friend. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

The Roman Emperors didn't have UAVs and some of the best trained special forces operators in the world today.

Not saying demobilization hasn't hurt but militaries cost money and nothing sucks up funds like a perpetually modernizing military force. We're better served by minimizing, specializing, and focusing our efforts to those that multiply our force.

Being the best ain't cheap. Now we have to decide what we're good at because we can't do it all on a shoestring.

The last line of this article says much:

As Edward Gibbon observed of the Roman Legions in his monumental history of the ancient world's greatest empire, "They preserved peace by a constant preparation for war."

Maybe instead of saying "militaries cost money and nothing sucks up funds like a perpetually modernizing military force." We should look at a perpetual strong military and internal law enforcement as being the cost of survival.

As discussed about the Roman Army. I offer, that once the Roman Army became full of mercenaries and lost its military supremacy (when it quit modernizing), then it became downgraded in both use and capability, which eventually cost the Roman Empire its existence.

I lean towards Jared Diamond's conclusion, which is that the constant ost of maintaining large military forces is the cause of empires falling.

True strength is found in a nation's economy, business innovation, and infrastructure, and keeping lots of guys in uniform just detracts from that.