Grand Strategy: A Trump Strength

At dinner with my wife I was discussing Trump’s strengths and weaknesses, in the context of whether it would be best for him to run again or not. We both agreed that in many respects Trump is a very intelligent man, but that he displays areas of surprising naivete. For example, his seeming trust in career military high rankers to be straight shooters. Or, similarly, his seeming belief that scientists “follow the science” rather than the path of least resistance for career enhancement, or even blatantly political agendas. I suggested that the J6 quest to destroy Trump, possibly through a criminal referral, may backfire big time. My guess is that most of the country would see such a move as blatantly and partisanly political—Trump would end up playing an heroic role against the DC swamp. It might also make someone like DeSantis, if he follows good advice, unbeatable and even a much tougher president than Trump ever was. YMMV.

However, that’s just the lead in. Friend George’s latest missive, yesterday, was a followup on the issue of the continued relevance of the industrial basis for war. I’d been looking for a way to bring Friend George’s material into a post, and commenter Rascal Nick Of provided that opportunity with a link to a thoughtful 15 minute or so video with Dr. Peter Pry. Taken together, they highlight Trump’s strategic vision of a reset with Russia within the context of American strategic vulnerability.

Friend George provided a link to an article that discusses the result of a 2017 study:

Industrial Base Too ‘Brittle’ For Big War: Dunford

CAPITOL HILL: Is the arsenal of democracy out of business? Probably not, but America’s “increasingly brittle industrial base” may not be able to sustain our forces in a protracted war, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Joseph Dunford, warned the Senate in a written statement this morning. It’s a problem a lot of people are wrestling with, from Dunford’s subordinates on the Joint Staff to academics and a White House-commissioned task force. There are solutions, a panel of experts said this afternoon on the Hill – if we just invest enough to research and develop them.

A protracted war? Isn’t that what we’re seeking in Ukraine, now that Russia hasn’t folded? Woops! The big worry—for those who paid no attention to this study—is that the West is collectively running through it’s stockpiles without the capacity to restock any time soon.

The highest-level effort to find answers is that White House task force, commissioned by President Trump. “In the executive order, the analytical focus is on peer competitor conventional threats that would really stress all the different vectors of the industrial base,” an administration official told me, in contrast to the past 16 years of counterinsurgency, which only strained certain sectors like uparmored vehicles.

In the old days, when traditional defense contractors were tapped out, the military could turn to commercial companies. That’s no longer true. “In not just World War II, but Korea and Vietnam and the Cold War, you were able to draw from this manufacturing industrial base that was dual use. You had a vibrant automotive industry for instance,” the official said. “Today, the manufacturing capacity is just not there on the civilian side.”

…

Friend George offered some comments on this. Keep in mind as you read this Lavrov’s recent comments to the effect that Russia sees the current situation as similar to the strategic situation before WW2:

Functioning as a “strategic communicator,” Doug Macgregor said in a recent interview, “General Milly knows we are not prepared for this war.” Without putting any weight on Milley as a person, the point is that the entire Pentagon leadership knows this because it knows the report Trump’s EO generated. We therefore have one of those “fork in the road” issues: either the US military forgot everything Trump made them learn for the first time, if they didn’t already know (but some surely did), or they went into this war knowing the US/NATO/EU would lose, thus, via the war, ripping up the institutional frameworks preventing the US from unleashing its own scientific, technological, industrial revolution, with spin-offs over the long run in defense capacities. Or, a third option consists of a mixture of the two fork in the road options: some of the military command are political toadies of the “Deep State” and do what they are told, while the others lean back, recalling Benjamin Franklin’s slogan, counting on the war to whip out the incompetents in the military command.

The EU as an institution is locked into a deindustrialization policy, merely symbolized by the Green New Deal.

Now think of Germany, first of all because there is some talk about Germany nowadays, also because Doug Macgregor was Trump’s nominee as ambassador to Germany, but think about Germany especially in light of the ostensible commitment to spend 100 billion € on rearmament. Think of the several forms in the road which present themselves: 1. The Greens are apparently the big war-mongers at the moment, but 2. if the US and Europe and Germany deindustrialize, there is no way for Germany to rearm. 3. If the Greens want to rearm and if they want to rebuild the Bundeswehr, they run against their own base: which Green voters will agree to joining a new Germany army? 4. Germany does not need NATO, so Germany can live with a defeat of NATO in Ukraine. 5. Germany will not now give up its staff positions in NATO as long as the institution continues to exist, but the chancellery is obviously working to coral [sic] the tails that wag dogs, which includes constraining British maniacs. Thus, 6. Germany can both live with and even facilitate rolling NATO back to its 1997 borders.

Now, with that buildup, we have the video with Dr. Peter Pry. You may disagree with some of what he says, but overall this is, to my mind, a very thoughtful presentation. I believe it reflects in great part Trump’s strategic thinking—which is what led to Trump being run out by the DC Establishment. Trump was right, of course: