Internat'l Chimera

With all the subtlety of an ex parading about with their lesser version of you, Dr Frederick Kagan and Dr Thomas Donnelly flaunt their latest creation on upgrading Great Satan's creative destruction ala voltiguer. And it is sweet too.



"Ground Truth" has been unleashed and after a charm offensive using the 'Indirect Approach' (thank you Sir Basil!) American Enterprise is granting totally free downloads (thank you Dr Kimberly Kagan!) This essential work by the cat who threw down the gauntlet to the 'Defeat! Retreat! Repeat!' posse and defined victory and success in Iraq is the same cat who thought up Surge . "Ground Truth: The Future of U.S. Land Power " is up for grabs at American Enterprise Institute.


To celebrate here's a wicked tease - printed at great expense and at the last moment - called "The Internat'l Chimera"

"It had been commonplace in some circles until very recently to argue that the
United States should not try to prepare to fight future wars alone. America has
many allies around the world, and critics of the Bush administration often argue
that it was only Bush’s inept diplomacy that laid the burden for Iraq so
heavily on America’s armed forces.

This argument is not new. Eisenhower used it in the 1950s to argue that the
United States should focus on its nuclear arsenal and airpower and rely upon its
allies to provide ground forces

Rumsfeld famously used a version of it in Afghanistan, where the initial
American involvement consisted of a small number of Special Forces calling in
strikes from American air assets in support of indigenous ground forces.

We have argued elsewhere that the dangers of relying on indigenous allies in
complex postconflict situations often far outweigh the advantages of minimizing
the American ground force presence. But we must also note here that even the
best diplomacy in the world cannot overcome a fundamental fact: America’s allies
have disarmed themselves, on the whole, even more than the United States has.

The United States is now spending around 4 percent of its GDP on defense. NATO
set a target of 2 percent for its European members—and hardly any of them are
meeting that goal. The two best armies in Europe—the French and the
British—number fewer than two hundred thousand soldiers combined.

The French reckon on being able to deploy twenty-five thousand of those to
a major contingency, and have no reserve whatsoever.

The British deploy a far higher percentage of their force and have a reserve—the
Territorial Army—but British deployment includes thousands of soldiers in
Northern Ireland, and its Territorial Army forces are as overstretched and
burned out as the American National Guard.

Germany’s Bundeswehr is large, in principle, but it is still a conscript force,
trained to a fairly low standard, and bound by constitutional limitations and
serious national caveats that make it hard to deploy and harder to use.

The other NATO states that maintain deployable forces—Italy, Spain, and
Poland, primarily—can send anywhere from one to three thousand soldiers abroad
at a time. Such contributions are useful and important, to be sure, but they
cannot in any way make up for inadequacies in the American military.

Beyond NATO, Japan has begun strengthening its military and reducing the
restrictions on its use, but its attention will remain on its immediate
environment for a long time to come. Even an expanded Japanese military is
unlikely to send large numbers of combat troops to the Middle East or South
Asia.

South Korea has also contributed about a brigade to the stabilization of
Iraq, and seems set to continue that contribution, but it is hard to imagine
Seoul dramatically increasing its participation in this or any future
out-of-area war.

Australia and Canada have made important contributions, especially in
Afghanistan, but also in Iraq—but their armies are tiny and, given their
populations and respective economic conditions, certain to remain so.

One might consider reaching out beyond American allies to the large Indian Army,
or to Muslim states like Pakistan, Burma, Indonesia, or Egypt, for assistance in
policing Muslim lands in the Middle East; but the political problems of any
such undertakings would be daunting.

The tenuous relationship between India and Pakistan would be badly strained by
significant Indian deployments to Muslim states to the west of Pakistan, to say
nothing of the strains within Indian society between Muslims and Hindus.

The idea of deploying the unstable Pakistan Army, at once central to maintaining
secular government in Islamabad and a danger to that goal because of its growing
infiltration by Muslim extremists, is clearly unwise. Indonesia faces its own
domestic challenges with Muslim extremists, as does Egypt.

One should consider long and hard the wisdom of deploying Indonesian or Egyptian
troops to combat Muslim extremists who are likely to have their own
sympathizers within those forces—and who are certain to work hard to infiltrate
them and gain new adherents.

As America’s friends and allies are disarming, our adversaries are arming. The
Chinese have been engaged in a significant expansion of their military power for
years. The Russians have also declared their intention to upgrade their nuclear
arsenal, if nothing else— and they have the oil resources to expand their
conventional forces as well if they chose.

The Iranians have been expanding the reach and power of their terrorist
portfolio in the Middle East. Even Venezuela has embarked on an expansion of its
armed forces, although it is unlikely to be a meaningful threat outside its
immediate environs, whatever the course of that program, any time soon.

These trend lines are most worrisome. America’s current and potential foes are
expanding their capabilities across the spectrum from nuclear war to terrorism
even as our allies continue to reduce their military expenditures."

Great Satan has demonstrated an astounding flexibility in her own response to changing threats and international conditions yet only after being confronted face to face - like the aforementioned ex parading their latest conquest.



Ground Truth makes a great case - just in case - to upgrade all Great Satan's Regime Changers to pre empt future foes, crisis and foreign militaries anywhere, anytime and to get fired up about it now.