Stop The Spirit Of Zossen

The Imperial City And The World

You are here: Home / Archives for Defense

American Air Power This Day In History

By Leave a Comment

March 9, 1945 marked the beginning of the new American incendiary bombing of civilian targets in Japan. Low-flying U.S. warplanes carrying 65% more bombs over the next 2 says created the largest firestorm in recorded history, killing 80-130,000 civilians and destroying 16 square miles. Curtis Le May told the bombing crews they would be “delivering the biggest firecracker the Japanese have ever seen.” By July 1945 such low-level incendiary raids proved so devastating that LeMay declared no worthwhile targets existed in Japan.

These raids killed more people and caused greater damage than the subsequent atomic bombings. The stench from the burning bodies sucked into the firestorm and the blood, turned into mist and wafting on the wind, was so intense Americans in the B-29s turned on their oxygen masks to keep from vomiting.

The raids, however, failed to achieve their goal. As with the British and American air attacks on Germany earlier, the Japanese overcame their initial shock and their morale bounced back. Only the threat of existential atomic obliteration changed matters.

_______________________________

Useful to keep in mind listening to air power advocates today. Air power lost some prestige after last decade’s Air Force failed fantasies of compelling war terminating outcomes with Rapid Decisive Operations. Just a few years before the Balkans demonstrated the same truths. Air power failed to achieve a meaningful result. NATO turned to a threatened ground assault to bring that operation to close. The 1991 Gulf War? Same.

America seemingly chooses to forget. Airpower tempts with an illusory clean solution, fixed without need to get dirty on the ground. La plus ca change.

You Don’t Say . . . Gates Gets Wet As An Amphibian

By 2 Comments

In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.

Bob Gates, February 25, 2011

You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders – The most famous of which is “never get involved in a land war in Asia” – but only slightly less well-known is this: “Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line”! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha . . .

Vizzini, (1987)

Gates tells the Army that Krauthammer and the ‘Go Ashore’ crowd are history. And beneath the crude bureaucrat calculation, Gates seeks to return the U.S. to fundamental geopolitical realities: we’re an amphibian power, not a continental one. Too little, too late.

The DoD Sham Budget Dog And Pony Show

By 6 Comments

The Obama Administration’s apparent agreement to shield current DoD bloat at essentially a 1% annual level while proclaiming dramatic cuts is chutzpah even for them. Given our general fiscal collapse, Obama’s proposed budget is actually just a pre-emptive token for political optics. This budget preserves intact the perpetual militarization launched by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Obama ironically really *is* Sovietizing America in this regard.

Smoke, Mirrors And The Out Year Fiscal Fantasies

It’s a proposal. So we shouldn’t get too worked up just yet. Why? Whenever anyone talks about ‘out year savings’ or ‘projected fiscal year savings’ they’re babbling for political cover. DoD budgets are approved annually, as you know. Authorizers and appropriators alike always have rejected budget reform proposals like two-year budgets to improve management and savings. This Tea Party crowd reading Gilberts ConLaw to each other won’t cede any of that annual power to the illegitimate Obama. Plus, neither party got worked up over running two wars off the books. Out year projections like statistics are often fibs.

Second, a rational government would link DoD budgets to U.S foreign policy and security goals. Obama’s vaunted new look foreign policy? Offers tone and tenor differences from Bush. Welcome. What’s jarring — but predictable — about this Administration DoD proposed budget? It enshrines the essential irrational global militarization of 2001-2008. Obama also doesn’t threaten any major rice bowls. Existing political-economic constituencies may complain but they escape largely unscathed. Bush Lite. It’s classic Obama Goldilocks Syndrome — go for lukewarm pudding. Adams in the NYT may say ‘I think the floor under defense spending has now gone soft’. If he means unchecked irrational growth is over, he might have a point. Nonetheless, when we cut through all the smoke and mirrors, Obama proposes an aggregate overall package concealing about 1% actual real growth or at worse a steady state. Some floor.

How ‘Republicans’ and the Movement factions reconcile their fiscal and security memes among themselves remains unknown. 2008-2010 tells us that Obama and Democrats are incapable of bold conceptual initiatives. The worst outcome for America and the world? To fudge the hard questions and ‘muddle through’ on tactical politics of the moment. The Tweetyverse applauds Obama for saying tax reform will regain his mojo. That’s our point. The responsible play for America and history (what Obama claims to value) is to do the hard work and re-evaluate American strategic interests first in our new incarnation. Then reconfigure the purpose of American power and its budget accordingly.

Consider the British experience post-1918. Seemingly a victor of the Great War, Great Britain was already no longer ‘great’ even by 1920. Nonetheless, successive governments left unchanged her Imperial commitments. Meanwhile, her actual outlays fluctuated according to disassociated tactical domestic and internal political-economic logic. Her ‘ends means gap’ between her global commitments and what she was able to do? A significant contributor to 50 million people dying 1939-45.

[Read more…]