The original post on military preparedness, Is America Ready For War?, continues to draw informed comment. Since its such an important topic—one which is widely misunderstood—and is so topical, I’ll continue to present some of this commentary. I have some additional related material as well.
First, a briefer—but pointed—comment from a correspondent who prefers to remain anonymous but who has long experience in the field:
The US military is incapable of going to war, and I mean just getting to the war. We financed twenty years of misadventure in Iraq and Afghanistan through deficit spending. We "deferred" maintenance on our existing major systems (aircraft, ships, tanks, trucks, communications, advanced weapons systems, everything). The majority of our fighter, bomber, and heavy lift aircraft are grounded (I don't know the precise numbers, but an educated SWAG is that less than 30% are airworthy). Our pilots don't get enough flight hours to remain mission capable. The same is true for all major systems.
The military that did back-to-back combat tours for years no longer exists. All those folks are gone, retired or just got out. The military today is inexperienced. In the US military, you want to know someone's priorities, observe how they spend their time and money. The US military doesn't spend time and money preparing to fight.
Meanwhile, the Russians, Chinese, and even the Iranians have spent the last quarter century modernizing their capabilities.
The author of this next comment formerly taught at the National War College, so it’s unsurprising that he presents a “bigger picture” overview. He begins from von Clausewitz’s famous dictum that war is politics by other means:
With all do [sic] respect to LTC Robert Fausti, his comment might be a bit misleading:
We haven’t had effective military planning for years. We proceed on political assumptions. [Again: sic. Should = “We need to proceed …”?]
There is no purpose to military planning without a political objective (and assumptions).
See Dead Carl (von Clausewitz)
To quote Christopher Bassford (https://www.clausewitz.com/readings/Bassford/Trinity/TrinityTeachingNote.htm):
Clausewitz’s trinity comprises three specific elements. The identity of those elements is readily evident to anyone who actually reads the first paragraph of his description: It is “composed of primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force; of the play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam; and of its element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to reason....” (emphasis added). This set of elements is usually labeled “emotion/chance/reason”; sometimes “violence/chance & probability/rational calculation”; or, even more abstractly, “irrationality/nonrationality/rationality.”
However, this enumeration of the elements of the trinity—whichever set of words one chooses for shorthand—is not universally understood. Prior to the American debacle in Vietnam, no one writing in English had paid any serious attention to the trinity. The term first achieved prominence in somewhat skewed form in U.S. Army Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr’s influential 1981 study, On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (written at the U.S. Army War College).*2Summers focused on a secondary set of elements that seemed extremely relevant in the specific circumstances in which American military thinkers found themselves during and after the defeat in Indochina. This useful secondary trinity consists of the people, the army, and the government.
We need a political objective, then a military aim.
C R Krieger
Now, anyone who has been exposed to Neocon strategery will recognize that they typically deploy blizzards of theorizing and ratiocination. Nevertheless, the fact that all their supposed strategery has repeatedly led the American Empire into dead end debacles is a clear sign that they have not internalized von Clausewitz’s trinity—specifically, the third element of rational calculation. They are driven by desire, by wish, by raw emotion, which they present in the deceptive form of a rational theoretical policy framework, but which in reality misses the most fundamental requirement: a policy goal that is realistically attainable. That’s a dead giveaway that, for all their superficially rational calculations, it’s raw emotion that’s driving their calculations—not reason.
Doug Macgregor has stated this repeatedly. For example:
in Washington there is almost a non-stop drum beat for war with Iran. it's really quite disturbing. again there's no thinking--it's all emotion.
In another outstanding monologue today Danny Davis makes the same point in his own way. The lack of truly rational planning is the thread that runs throughout, but here near the end, where he speaks of doing things “wisely”, of taking past experience into account, rather than being driven by chest beating emotion:
[15:57]
I'm here to tell you, if we thought the Iraq War was bad--and it was--if we get sucked into a war in the Middle East against Iran it will be so much worse than you think, and all of these big proud guys who beat their chest and talk about how, 'Yeah, we're gonna show Iran, and we're going to be tough to them!' they have no clue what's going to happen after the bombs drop. See, they want they want to tell you, they want to imply, that Iran is just a paper tiger and they would just shrivel and stop the first time some bombs hit. But for God's sake we've got so much experience on the ground that shows that [things don't] work that way. If anyone had any doubts, just look at what's happening right now with Hamas and and Israel. They keep getting pounded heavily, over and over, and they don't quit. They just keep going. And the risk of war with Hezbollah in Lebanon is rising. The possibility of Iran coming in--you already have the Houthis down in the Red Sea. Everywhere you want to look there's the risk of War this is the time, folks, this is the time right now, on the 6th of January 2024. There is no war that we're sucked into yet. We have the chance at this moment to back out of this wisely, to protect our flanks, to get our troops out of harm's way, redeploy them to places they're more protected and less vulnerable to any of these Iran backed groups. Get our troops out of Iraq. Let's do it responsibly. Let's do it in synchronization so it's not this willy nilly run dash to the exit like we did in Afghanistan.
Lastly, I’ll provide a simple link. We’ve cited Jacques Baud’s views in the past. Baud is a former Swiss army colonel who specialized in intelligence and who, in the past, worked closely with the Ukrainian military. He has written a book, which is being translated into English. The first chapter is available online in English, and the topic seems highly relevant:
This passage will give you an idea of the theme of the book, as well as how it ties in with some of the comments we’ve published on preparedness—because preparedness is about a lot more than just weapons systems. Baud begins, if I may interpret a bit, by distinguishing between the use of reason as geared to true understanding, and a merely superficial appeal to rationalization:
The problem with the vast majority of our so-called military experts is their inability to understand the Russian approach to war. It is the result of an approach we have already seen in waves of terrorist attacks—the adversary is so stupidly demonized that we refrain from understanding his way of thinking. As a result, we are unable to develop strategies, articulate our forces, or even equip them for the realities of war. The corollary of this approach is that our frustrations are translated by unscrupulous media into a narrative that feeds hatred and increases our vulnerability. We are thus unable to find rational, effective solutions to the problem.
The way Russians understand conflict is holistic. In other words, they see the processes that develop and lead to the situation at any given moment. This explains why Vladimir Putin’s speeches invariably include a return to history. In the West, we tend to focus on X moment and try to see how it might evolve. We want an immediate response to the situation we see today. The idea that “from the understanding of how the crisis arose comes the way to resolve it” is totally foreign to the West. In September 2023, an English-speaking journalist even pulled out the “duck test” for me: “if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.” In other words, all the West needs to assess a situation is an image that fits their prejudices. Reality is much more subtle than the duck model….
The reason the Russians are better than the West in Ukraine is that they see the conflict as a process; whereas we see it as a series of separate actions. The Russians see events as a film. We see them as photographs. They see the forest, while we focus on the trees. That is why we place the start of the conflict on February 24, 2022, or the start of the Palestinian conflict on October 7, 2023. We ignore the contexts that bother us and wage conflicts we do not understand. That is why we lose our wars…
That is why we lose our wars. For so many Americans, history and philosophy and political theory that goes beyond tactics to win elections is … boring. Not so for Putin. Putin is winning.
At my agency, I observed the hallowing out of our tradecraft expertise, especially after the Berlin Wall fell and we cashed in the "peace dividend." Agencies are dependent on Congress for hiring, as is proper. Our agency went about four years without hiring in the early 1990s. As our expertise retired, we didn't capture their SME, subject matter expertise. Then the agency, a DOD combat support agency, was merged with elements of the IC and we became a four-letter intelligence agency. Being the new kid on the block, merging cultures of eight agencies, all while the world was changing from the predictable Cold War to today's messy situation was challenging enough. We from the DOD felt as though there had been a merger of equals and the IC won. Our agency successfully lobbied to change our name to become a three-letter agency, even if we had to hyphenate part of our name as Geospatial-Intelligence. Believe me, in this game, a three letter acronym matters. And, it is a game. A game of getting promoted to senior, building fiefdoms, going along to get along and retiring to work in the private sector.
All of a sudden, our mapping, charting and geodesy was being contracted out at great levels. Morale suffered. The explicit message was, "Get with the program, or get out." The election of Clinton slowly ushered in some bad changes. We began to take our eye off the ball from our bread and butter, which is GEOINT, and we focused on leadership, Diversity and Inclusion (D and I), later changed to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).
Young people were hired in with the expectation of immediately being promoted. When they were not promoted, many left. The Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and LGBT issues really changed our agency culture. The election of Donald Trump brought rebellion from the SESes and the rank and file. Many of us did not buy-in, but we knew better than to speak out. The George Floyd incident further set us down the road of radical cultural shift. Senior leaders began to speak of "the murder of George Floyd", before anyone was even charged.
Many of our three-star generals/admirals, serving as our agency heads were disgustingly woke. They'd bring in fellow generals/admirals for conferences or speeches and they were also woke.
The pandemic was the icing on the cake. Those of us who refused to get vaccinated were pariahs. The agency core values are called EARTH. excellence, accountability, respect, teamwork and honesty. Most of the respect was limited to platitudes about the wonders of LGBT, women, minorities, etc. But when it came to labelling those who resisted vaccinations as "antivaxxers", there wasn't the enthusiasm on management's part to discipline those who demeaned us. Allegedly, our agency director referred to the unvaccinated as "Covidiots." At the time, the unvaccinated were the majority, until Biden issued his four mandates in September of 2021. I was incredulous at the things that managers and fellow employees thought they could blatantly say in public, to include putting in writing. I began to speak out, making sure that my own words were not political, pointing out that we are supposed to be non-partisan. I must admit that when I spoke out in the comments section of our IC blogs, I did enjoy seeing heads explode. Instead of refuting my words, I was attacked and called antisemitic, a white supremacist, an election denier, etc. I didn't even mention race, religion or Donald Trump in my rebuttals.
That's part of the problem in today's culture. People emote today and they don't think. Many only repeat what they've been told. They can't refute a logical argument, so they attack.
My long post can be summed up by saying that based on what I saw from my perch after 34 years as a federal employee, I can believe, in fact, I know intuitively, that our military is not ready for a war with a peer competitor. Our nation's foundation is now built on sand. If we continue down this path, disaster awaits us.
Sir,
I guess I am duty bound to clarify,
“We haven’t had effective military planning for years. We proceed on political assumptions.”
I never said that, and I do not see how it is inferred from my post. I merely pointed out the facts and let the chips fall where they may. What I wrote was a stand-alone, fact based, assessment and I remain faithful to it.
As far as that concept of “political assumptions”? It is a given that national needs and aspirations drive political decisions. Political decisions drive security concerns. Security concerns drive intelligence gathering and assessments. Intelligence results drive military strategy and therefore military build/ configuration and priorities. None of the that determines if a force is ready to fight and win, TODAY. Why? Because you are dealing with human beings who make decisions not solely based on military needs. It also does not consider the state of the present military. Politics and readiness are part of the problem but not the same. We need to talk apples and apples, not apples and oranges.
The question was “is America ready for war?” That is only part of the question. The real question is “Today”. Can we fight and win Today? Therefore, the issue that I addressed was…. Give a hard look at what we actually know, not what we want, or what we hope will be. So in looking for the factors of whether or not American was ready, I said in my post, as far as factors to be ready….
“Let’s take the easy ones, the obvious ones first.”
And that is what I did. Believe me, subject like this is deadly serious and my intent was not to mislead anyone.
War is a many faceted subject. What do you want to talk about? Intangibles (politics and decision making) or hard numbers ( how many men or armaments available) ?
An explanation/analysis of Strategic Politics and Leadership decision making is a totally different subject area of war than a nation’s current logistical capability to fight. Both areas are important. If you want a hard tangible answer do not look at Leadership and politics because they are not quantifiable. That is the realm of social and cultural intangibles. Logistics is hard science, that is why I chose it as my main point. LTC Davis always talks about the fundamentals in war- fighting. And he is absolutely right. If you do not have the fundamental perquisites to win, you will be defeated. Currently, we are sadly lacking in logistical fundamentals.
In reference to Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Moltke, or anyone else in talking about the reasons for going to war: you are stepping from the battlefield to the god level. To use national leadership or the political realm as a analysis of a country’s ability to win on the field of battle, can and is done. But trying to decipher the inner workings of national decision making is a different matter entirely than looking at logistical viability. “Decision making culture” in a society, is the unquantifiable realm of Eternal Rome and DC. You are trying to read minds. For a precise look at predictability, try to figure out your stockage shortages.
I am not saying that intel analysis of Political leadership is useless or should not be done. The video LTC Davis made was perfectly valid and extremely valuable. Giving credence to Davis’s work: Jack Keene’s words give us a general feel where our current situation is headed. LTC Davis was absolutely right to point this out. Keene works for ISW and therefore he is working with the Kagan/Nulland Neocon element. These people currently drive our national foreign policy. Therefore, Keene is probably giving us an insight of how these people think and what they see in the future. Davis does us a great favor by pointing this out.
Today, based on hard numbers and due to fate and the decisions of the past, we are now in an uncertain state of military readiness That is reality. Is America ready to fight a major war? Materially/logistically, no. And as far the capability or competence of our senior leadership, past performance does not give confidence as a predictor of future success.
And what will our Political Leadership do in the future? Who knows? But, LTC Davis’s concerns are valid.