Wampum

I'm looking at the Force Structure Plan and there are some sentences that would do well in a creative writing class, but don't have a lot to do with rational defense policy.

It isn't a long document, and it is the policy document that any critic, Congressional or otherwise, of any element of the current round of proposed closures and realignments, must point to one way or another. In the spirit of Juan Cole's one-sided debates with George Bush, I'll pull on these wayward ... er ... threads.

Strategy and Force Development (verbiage about resolve and commitment, allies and dangerous capabilities, and the President) ... forces must have the ability to defeat any adversary at the time, place, and in the manner of US choosing.

Now the interesting thing in this bit is the part I've emboldened. Any adversary could be CENTO, the EU, plus wicked big bits of the OAS, and parts of OAU just for completeness -- that's Iran/Iraq/Afganistan/Pakistan, plus France, friends and relations, Venezuela/Brazil/Mexico and lots of Africa, in particular the bits with either oil or muslims. Oh. And Canada. Oh Canada. Bush's foreign critics, armed, and, at least for the moment, unarmed.

That "any adversary", without recourse to alliances and alllies is over the top. Gulf II, Gulf I, Vietnam, Korea, Europe and the Pacific (1941-1945), and Europe (1917-1918), were all conflicts in which the US did not risk war without alliances and alllies. Once those national military experiences are subtracted from the 20th century, what is left is Panama, Grenada, the Spanish American War and ... not a lot else. We'll have to come back to this, so on to the next quotable quote.

Transformation to a Capabilities-Based Approach: The purpose of transformation is to extend key advantages and reduce vulnerabilites. We are now in a long-term struggle against persistent, adaptive adversaries, and must transform to prevail.

If the intent is to refer to Mohammad Atta's gang of 19 suicides, they be dead. Wicked Dead. For everything else, from Bali to London, the adversaries (do note the plural) are neither persistent, nor are they particularly adaptive (compare, Viet Cong, IRA), and no transformation of the force structure, other than articulating police and intelligence forces elements instead of military force elements, is likely to have the slightest non-negative net effect.

Note Well: This transformation from the well-known to "capabilities-based" unknown motivates everything that follows, and presumes, without definition, what "capabilites" are, or aren't. However, it gets better.

Transformational change is not limited to operational forces. We also want to change long-standing business process within the Department to take advantage of information technology.

Which of the following is now obsoleted by this novel idea? The Johnson Subcommittee (1945),
the Department of Defense (1947), the Joint Financial Management Improvement Program (1950), the Planning, Programming and Budget System (1962), the Financial Management Service (1974), the Defense Business Operating Fund (1992), the Clinger-Cohen Act (1996), the Defense Working Capital Fund (1997), the Defense Reform Initiative (1997), the Financial Management Modernization Program (7/2001), or any of the post-9/2001 management and procurement exercises?

Is "IT" ever going to make it inside the Pentagon???

IT has been inside the Pentagon since Big Mac introduced the PPBS in 1962. I'm not that surprised that its been overlooked by the current SecDef/OSD, and not at all surprised that "tak[ing] advantage of information technology" is being flogged on Congress critters and the rubes as the novelty that moots all prior knowlege.

The Traditional challenges para in Probable Threats to National Security is well written, and the writer makes the case for "maintenance of sufficient combat overmatch in key areas of traditional military competition". Combat overmatch is a reasonable policy goal (try the inverse, the perpetual sticky Republican Rant that buys the Armed Forces ... zippo), just so long as spending the adversaries into the ground ... just spends the adversaries into the ground, and doesn't cause significant and otherwise untasked and unrecoverable military industrial distortions, Ike's caution is as good or better today as it was January 17th, 1961.

However, if one needs to find "adversaries [] likely to exploit a host of irregular methods [] to erode U.S. influence, power, and national will over time", the Bush/Cheney/Rumsford/Frith/Perl/ clique should not be overlooked, particularly their penchant for torture and violation of the Geneva Convenions (all of them).

If negating "U.S. influence, power, and national will" translates as "ability to obtain and retain wartime allies" the adversaries currently holding Occupied Washington appear to be quite capable.

The War on Terrorism imparts an urgency to defense transformation; we must transform to win the war.

Here we have a domestic political message elevated to the status of doctrine. This is where every intelligent military reader should stop, and take a walk. Past one, or two bars if that helps clear the mind. Transformation, whatever that is, is a change from a doctrine to another. The motivation for a fundamental doctrinal change could be something fundamental like ... a fundamental change in the relationship between fire and maneuver, the changing nature of close air support, the compression of the sensor to shooter loop, or important coalition and jointness issues,

Anything less should not make it past the charm school's thesis adviser's desk.

On to asymetry, Ollie North's other claim to fame.

The Irregular challenges subsection slips "global security" in as an alternate formulation of "national security", and suggests that Che is still operating in Bolivia, or Africa, or Laos. Note 9/11 is described as "innovative". Condi Rice must have written that sentence.

Now I regret that I haven't written the follow-up to Ew! Pew Stinks, but it is worth pointing out that 66% of the so-called "intelligent" and "sophisticated" demographic will buy the next bit of tripe like teen age boys buy Paris Hilton, or DLC Dems bought Kerry's inevitability and electability but ... this really is crap and people who work on the problem know it is ... crap.

The interdependent nature of the [US national] infrastructure crests [sic] more vulnerability because attacks against one sector -- the electrical power grid for instance -- would impact other sectors as well. Parts of the defense-related critical infrastructure are vulnerable to a wide range of attacks, especially those that rely on commercial sector elements with multiple single points of failure.

There is a Democratic response to external threat, and it isn't a brittle egg shell perimeter defense, augmented by lawless, even insane random acting out. Domestic spending on incrementally resillient, modernized, efficient infrastructure, defense in depth, integrated into the civil economy, and support for the international law and treaty system. I'm still looking for a Democratic candidate who wants to run on defense, and peace.

The next para is simply insane:

The continuing illicit proliferation of WMD technology and experties makes contending with catastrophic challenges an enduring necessity. A single catastrophic attack against the United States is an unacceptable prospect. The strategic effect of such an attack transcends the mere economic and social costs. It represents a more fundamental, existential threat to our nation, our institutions, and our free society. Thus, new emphasis must be applied to capabilites that enable us to dissuade acquisition of catastrophic capabilities, deter their use, and finally, when necessary, defeat them prior to the posing direct threats to us and our partners.

The claim here is that one nuke, one package, is end-game. Look back at the photo. Translate that in your mind to manufacture of heavy airlift, to heavy maneuver, to ... all the way down to victory gardens. The claim is obviously false. One package is a tragedy on the scale of ... last week's earthquake in Kashmir, or last Boxing Day's Tsunami, or the Boxing Day before that's earthquake in Bam (Iran), or ...

The possibility of one, or more, or a lot more, packages being exchanged by nuclear-weapons states has been present for five decades. At no point has that greater absolute risk motivated the risk of attempting preemption. And "state actors" present a different profile to the targeteer than nebulous "non-state actors".

On to the coda:

Finally, at the direction of the President, we will defeat adversaries at the time, place, and in the manner of our choosing -- setting the conditions for future security.

The unfortunate any adversary language is now fixed, but Congress, the author of the Articles of War, the sole Constitutional entity capable of bringing a State of War into being, and non-being, are conspicuously absent, and failing to mention the Laws of Nations and the Laws of War at this point in the drill is ... simply torture.

Now, where are we going with all this verbal crap? The next BRAC post has the numbers.

Google Key: BRAC list