> Behalf Of Marvin Long, Jr. > > I don't believe Gautam slighted anyone else's soldiers; as I read it, what > he argued is that in terms of overall coordination, control, and support, > most nations' militaries can't fight much beyond their own borders without > the US's help. If that's the case, then US military leaders have a > cost-benefit analysis to do: "If we fight jointly with nation X in the > Middle East, will the destructive power they bring to bear be worth the > extra cost the US will pay in support services for their troops and > equipment. Plus, will it be possible for them to coordinate with our > high-tech systems efficiently, or will they slow down our own operations > as we try to accommodate them?"
No, Gautam hasn't slighted anyone else's soldiers. And what he said was roughly the case. Believe it or not, this is part of what I think is wrong about the US mega budget. What is happening now is that one nation is outspending the combined defence budget of at least the next 15 powers. That defence force is being built up for global operations in a way in which little or no coordination is possible with any other force. Yes, the US is a superpower. And thank god you're a democracy and believe in freedoms. But maybe, just maybe, not everything America decides to do is in the best interests of anyone else? You wonder, perhaps, why "everyone else" is anti-American? Maybe it's cos everybody else is very, very soon going to have to take America completely on trust. As Gautam says: And in a couple of years we will have _thirteen_ Carrier Task Forces. _Each one_ will be more powerful than the second largest Navy in the world - arguably, since no one else has any meaningful carrier forces, each one will be more powerful than the _combined_ Navies of the world. This is one capacity (among many) that other countries just don't have. If you want to talk about strategic affairs in the world today, you have to start with the basic understanding that the US is vastly different from every other country in the world - more different than any other country in history. End quote Don't you see something worrying here? Not just one or two carrier groups, each more powerful than any other navy - THIRTEEN. That is just straight out and out overkill. One of these days, most of us fear, that big helpful kid in the playground might just turn into the biggest bully we've ever heard about. And there'll be absolutely NOTHING any of us, alone or in concert, can do about it. And not only that, any time we want to help him, even just play with him, it has to be done exactly on his terms. So we get a little scared of him. And one day, he doesn't have any friends apart from one or two who crawl to him like nothing you've ever seen. > > If Gautam's facts are right, then the conclusions which follow may very > well be that a) it's too *expensive* for the US to use other nations' > troops as cannon fodder -- the costs outweigh the benefits -- and b) > outfitting US troops with other nations' gear will increase their > likelihood of becoming cannon fodder themselves. Yes, agreed. Jeroen was entirely wrong in using the term "cannon fodder" because, what cannon fodder is is those troops you want to expend before you use your own. Remember our discussion a while back about Russian Penal Battalions in WW2? They were cannon fodder. Only one in three actually had a gun in hand when sent into attack. When one was killed, it was expected that someone else would use his gun. > It simply means, as Gautam already > pointed out, that the US spends so much money on its military already that > other nations simply can't keep up. There used to be a thing called the Balance of Power. That concept is well and truly dead now, because there is virtually no combination of forces that can balance the power of the US. Gautam again: Thanks Marvin. In fact, I'm implying the exact opposite of that. I'm arguing (and this is exactly what happened in the Kosovo operation) that the highest risk operations will have to be done by American soldiers - that allied forces essentially have to be kept out of the most intense combat both for their own and our protection. end quote Militarily it is most effective that forces be under one command and integrated. It has always been Australia's bane, until East Timor, that Australian forces always had to fit into someone else's force structure. But you know what? We sometimes benefited too, by: 1. Learning new ways of doing things 2. Having some, if minor, influence on the use of the forces You know what else? Sometimes the Great Power we were aligned with learnt something from us. If the US finds itself in the position where it decides to do it all itself (and effectively that is what HAS happened since 1991) then what chance is there of anyone else providing useful insight or some additional control to suit local situations? Exactly what we now see - None. Added to the current belief exhibited by the Bush Whitehouse that treaties that hinder US strategies or operations in any way can be ignored, what are the rest of us to think? Basically, whatever the US wants to do is all that is going to happen. It also means that the American people are going to have to get used to stepping in to other people's troubles. Or will they just go isolationist again, as has been the case for almost the entirety of US history? Personally, I think it will be the latter. So, what then is the USE of all that hardware you've developed at such great expense? What happens when people start to wonder why so much money is spent on things that will never be used. What else could that spending be made on? And to ensure minimal loss of American troops, if American tactics are that bombing occurs from 15,000 feet and a circular error of probability of a few metres is acceptable, then dammit that is what is going to happen. Pity about the fact that sometimes, from a distance, ordinary hand movement means that the target designator those precision bombs are heading for has slipped a few hundred metres. And we get the situations where, because of intelligence supplied to the US by one local faction, a village gets wiped out that happened not to be Taliban but under the control of a local rival. Oh, sorry about that. Collateral damage. Now, more than ever, where the US has proven its determination to the rest of the world and where it has shown its capabilities, now is the time for it to say "we're gonna streamline our forces, cut back on some of this expenditure, maybe look at some of these ideas we have a bit more to fully understand their implications before we go ahead on them" Oh, and maybe it is time for the US to start saying that they want to be a good neighbour, not a bossy one. Look, you won. The world is your oyster. We know it and you know it. But it doesn't necessarily mean that we all want to become Americans. It certainly doesn't mean that whatever America wants is the best for everybody else. But nowadays, that doesn't matter. There is nothing apart from US public opinion to constrain any person who gets into the Whitehouse. Well sorry, I don't think that is a good situation for the world to be in. I think it's about time the US decided to live with us all as an equal again. And just think of some of the things you could spend that money on instead. Brett
