Summary of Key Points:

What the nation needs is competent political leadership in Congress, the White House, and the Pentagon with the understanding and the integrity to acknowledge the limits of American power. Fiscal caution must become an executive fixation and both generals and policymakers must comprehend the use of force on a scale that is less than absolute. This requires a new global military strategy that enshrines the principle of economy of force.

The United States cannot financially sustain the pursuit of global hegemony by intervening militarily in failing or failed societies with the object of imposing cultural change to quickly convert these societies' social, political and economic structures into modern Western institutions. Not only do these operations involve expensive long-term military garrisons on foreign territory, the probability of success for these interventions as seen throughout most of the 20th Century is low indeed.

Clearly, the nation needs a framework for the development and use of military power that rejects the notion that there is no condition for the use of military power that lies between the equally unrealistic conditions of total war and total peace. Devising a framework that defines the purpose, method and end-state for the use of American military power is essential.

Applying the purpose-method-end-state framework allows for the defense of the United States against attacks on U.S. territory and interests while focusing its military power on economy of force operations designed to punish and, when possible, destroy enemies that launch, attacks upon the territory and interests of the United States and it's allies. Joint Expeditionary Forces designed for limited operations can be organized, trained and equipped at far lower cost than mass armies created for long-term territorial conquest and occupation. At the same time, this approach allows for the economical maintenance of a credible nuclear force, as well as the securing of the nation's borders, coasts, and airspace. Avoiding total war with any adversary and the mobilization of America's human and industrial capacities that total war entails is not simply desirable it is absolutely vital.

Understanding America's limitations means re-orienting the direction of American foreign and security policy to the traditional English-speaking policy of making the American way of life attractive to others. As Washington and Hamilton argued, the goal is to transform America into the world's engine of prosperity.

Finally, when told of the passing of his mother-in-law and asked by the undertaker what to do Sir Winston Churchill replied: "embalm her, cremate her, and bury at sea... take no chances." The same holds true for the American military occupation of Central Iraq. End it immediately!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BACK-UP POINTS

1. How did it come to this?

In his testimony during confirmation hearings before the Senate Armed Services' Committee in the winter of 1993, the now deceased former Secretary of Defense Les Aspin contended that in the absence of an existential military threat to the United States, the mission of America's armed forces was to, "Punish evil doers."

The assumptions that underpin this amazing statement are important because they explain the impact of this statement. After all, the United States embarked on a series of Interventions to reshape the world in America's image after 1991.

Assumption No 1: International relationships, are static -- once made, they are lasting. Moreover, gratitude and popular affection are real forces in international affairs, and these too are lasting.

Assumption No 2: There can and should be a "new world order" founded on terms that conform to American political idealism.

Assumption No 3: As the richest country in the world, America has unlimited economic and military resources to change conditions it does not like anywhere on the planet. In economic terms, tinkering in other people's countries is cost free.

Assumption No. 4: America "won" the Cold War by investing its resources in military power the Soviet State could not defeat.

Assumption No 5: There is a "world community" that can be persuaded to support whatever initiative the United States proposes on the grounds that America's policies are inherently morally justified. The corollary to this assumption is that Nations and peoples ultimately behave towards one another the way individual people in the United States behave towards one another.

The reality is quite the opposite -- friendships, coalitions, even alliances, are usually transient, and the fundamental reality of international relations is brutal competition for influence, markets, resources, and power. Gratitude is nearly non-existent - most peoples and states assume that a foreign power is giving them assistance either in exchange for immediate favors or for considerations in return - and they are right!

Moreover, the Soviet State collapsed for reasons that had remarkably little to do with the threat of American military power. The war mobilization economy established by Stalin in the 1930s at enormous human cost simply reached entropy by the end of the 1970s.

This point notwithstanding, since 1991, three American Presidents in succession, convinced of the rightness of market economies and democratic governance, have pursued the utopian aim of sharing the American way of life with the rest of the world whether the world wants it or not. Firm in their belief that the chief cause of victory in the Cold War was American military might, three Presidents have concluded that the great task for unstoppable American military power is to create conditions fostering the emergence of new, healthy cultures and economies from the wreckage of the last century.

This belief is embodied in the stationing of American forces around the world from Uzbekistan to Kosovo, from Colombia to Pakistan creating what Paul Kennedy called, "Imperial Over-stretch." A small part of this policy's cost is evident in the hundreds of billion of dollars that continue to vanish into the black hole that is Iraq. Still, the true cost is only now emerging as America's enemies multiply in opposition to another utopian project that disrupts and destroys societies.

What's the point? The tragic lesson of these utopian schemes in countries from Haiti to Iraq is that they are more successful at destroying the old than in creating the new. Released from the constraints of traditional cultures and institutions, people in regions shattered by war and poverty reach for new ways to organize their lives and new weapons to defeat their enemies. This is why the current chaos and violence in Iraq was not caused by the military intervention, which could be justified on many grounds and could have succeeded if its aim had been more limited and realistic. Current conditions are a product of the decision to dismantle Iraqi national institutions and to occupy the country with hundreds of thousands of European Christians in U.S. and U.K. uniform as a step toward reshaping it. These points confirm the continuing validity of George Kennan's statement during the Cold War:

Perhaps our diplomacy of the first five decades of this century, and our reactions to the very different problems that have assailed us since 1950, both reflect realities much deeper than our responses of either period: namely, the lack of any accepted, enduring doctrine for relating military strength to political policy, and a persistent tendency to fashion our policy towards others with a view to feeding a pleasant image of ourselves rather than to achieving real, and desperately needed, results in our relations with others. 1

Myth-based ideology makes retreat from inflexible policy pronouncements when they no longer make sense difficult, if not impossible and that in a nutshell is America's problem in Iraq and, increasingly, around the world.

Stirred more by sentiment than rationality, true believers in the concept of the indispensable superpower as wide ranging in character as Madeleine Albright and Anne Coulter urge the American people to adopt strident, inflexible positions demanding complete, "total victory" without clearly defining what victory in the ambiguous context of exporting democracy might mean. For them, the occupations designed to change societies and cultures are manifestations of the uniquely American malady George Kennan called national narcissism, 2 a mental condition that treats the exportation at gunpoint of Western political, social and economic structures in the same way fundamentalist Muslims view the Holy Koran, as unconditionally right, and therefore unalterable.

Americans must understand that nations are built from within, not from without and reject the false promises of rapid modernization, democratization or lasting peace based on American military intervention. Free elections without the cultural and economic foundations that support the rule of law and a thriving middle class do not necessarily lead to a healthy body politic called democracy. Those who see elections as an article of faith should keep in mind that the freely elected Mr. Chavez is spreading his oil to push Latin America toward a blend of neo-Marxism and state corporate capitalism along with substantial cocaine into the United States. Even Adolf Hitler won a free election -- and went on to build the world's most formidable war machine in history's blink of an eye.

2. It's the occupation, stupid!

Since September 11, 2001, Congress has approved a total of $507 billion for the war on terror, sometimes adding to the military's requests. More recently, the Defense Department requested $99.7 billion more in emergency funding for Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terrorism that, if approved, would bring war spending in fiscal 2007 to a record $170 billion. The request, added to the $70 billion that Congress approved in September, is 45 percent higher than the $117 billion in supplemental funding approved last year. 3

Costs to the U.S. taxpayer - using borrowed money - are heading inexorably towards $1 trillion. These cost must be seen in the context of a fragile economy where 65% of the working population lives paycheck to paycheck, where nearly 50 million have no health insurance, where our infrastructure is neglected and where major problems in both the housing and automobile industries may well herald a recession.

Along with bad policy, bad generalship is a factor that must be considered in the cost equation outlined above. America's generals have behaved as though dollars and troops were inexhaustible when they never were. This is just the recent failure of many since 1945. Three times in the last 50 years, Congress and the President committed the Army and Marine Corps to conflict situations on short notice for which these services were fundamentally unprepared: Korea, Vietnam, and Kosovo. They did so with the expectation that the generals who commanded the forces would innovate and succeed or that the density of American firepower plus overwhelming masses of ground troops would eventually compensate for the services' poor fit with the strategic environment. These expectations were not met.

Instead, the nation's military commanders clung tenaciously to the old World War II structures, policies and thinking, rejecting calls for reform and reorganization on the grounds that some day, the Army would re-fight some version of World War II. In the 13 years since the first Gulf War, thanks to a hollow victory in 1991 sold to the pubic as a triumph over a serious enemy, this mentality prevailed inside the Army and Marines with disastrous consequences for American policy in Iraq. In an institutional culture that insists general officer Leadership is above criticism anyone who advocated a different path was marginalized. That's the "culture" that has survived all of the American military's much-discussed "transformations" since 1945. It's also a big reason why American military power has failed in Iraq.

3. What is to be done and how do we cope with the pecuniary externalities of war's market place?

Immediate Action that is required:

What can President Bush do to improve America's weakened strategic position, to align American economic and military commitments with America's tangible security interests and resources? Get out of Iraq!

As Lord Salisbury, Britain's Prime Minister in 1900 warned the House of Commons "the commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcass of dead policies." Unfortunately, President Bush is unlikely to walk away from what is obviously a bad investment in Iraq. This condition places Bush closer to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge's observation of President Woodrow Wilson in 1919 when he commented that, "Wilson's comprehension of government is that of the third Napoleon, an autocrat to be elected by the people through a plebiscite and no representative bodies of any consequence in between." 4

The longer the Bush Administration postpones the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, the worse conditions will become inside Iraq and across the Middle East. With each successive offensive by conventional American combat troops, the generals in U.S. Central Command always created more new enemies than they killed forging the foundation for a growing rebellion against the U.S. military occupation, a rebellion the generals and the Administration for reasons of political expediency call an "insurgency." The British Army also called the Irish Rebellion of 1916-1921 an "insurgency," but the world knew then that Ireland's tactical insurgency was really a strategic rebellion against British occupation. Conditions inside Iraq are no different.

Britain's experience in Ireland also reinforces another point: Only an indigenous government that believes in itself and its vision for the country/people, that acts wisely at the strategic and tactical levels, and perhaps is given the proper external, behind-the-scenes support, has a good chance at winning against a persistent indigenous rebellion. If the United States reinforces its failure in Iraq during 2007 by deploying more ground troops to Iraq, the American government will transform a disaster into a catastrophe that will claim far more blood and treasure than we have witnessed to date.

Sadly, sending more troops to Iraq at this point provides everyone with something they need: The White House and Congress can claim to be doing something. The generals get a built-in excuse for their failure (we didn't have enough troops) and even the enemy on the ground in Iraq wins because he gets several thousand more targets to wound or kill. Iran wins because our presence mobilizes support for their bid to lead the Muslim World. It is clearly a win-win situation for everyone except the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines on the ground in Iraq.

On the other hand, if Bush surprises us and the United States conducts a rapid, orderly withdrawal, it will restore freedom of maneuver to American foreign policy in the region and rob Iran of its role as the champion of Islam. For Tehran, the real issue is the Shi'a-Sunni struggle for control of Mecca and Medina and global leadership of an Islamic movement that both Sunni and Shi'a Islamists believe will, once unified and purified, conquer the world.

Iran's worst nightmare is that U.S. forces will leave Iraq and let the regional dynamics reassert themselves, dynamics that cast Iran, not the U.S. or Israel as the principle enemy of the Sunni Muslim Arab World. Under these circumstances, leaving Iraq is imperative. But Americans must understand that the U.S. military's failed occupation of Iraq has substantially narrowed the margin for future U.S. military blunders in the region.

Long-term action that is required: Economy of Force

America needs a new structure for American national security and a new global military strategy. In time of peace or war, it is wrong to allow the nation's military leaders the freedom to develop military strategy in isolation, to define their own programs and priorities, control their own funding lines, and then rate their own effectiveness. Clemenceau's dictum, "War is too important to be left to the generals," applies with equal force to the conduct of military operations and spending for military modernization in particular.

Ideally, conflicts in which U.S. forces fight should be limited in scope, purpose and duration. Large-scale military mobilizations to fight total wars result in massive economic dislocation and human suffering. There are reasons for limiting the application of force that go well beyond moral considerations.

First, the security interests beyond America's borders that prompt U.S. military intervention usually do not justify the mobilization of the nation's entire military power. Second, unchallenged American control of the oceans and the air gives the United States the opportunity to wage war on its own terms at places and under conditions of its own choosing. Third, to understand the strategic value of this approach, it is essential to distinguish the occupation of the enemy's territory for tangible economic or political gain, an essentially 19th Century concept, from the overthrow of the enemy's government, force and capabilities. The 19th Century mindset that exalts occupation adheres to the principle that in all conflicts violence must be pushed to its utmost limits and that any deliberate employment of more modest military means fails to fundamentally change the strategic environment in favor of the United States. This is untrue.

Owing to the geographical positions of those areas that are currently most important to American economic interests - the Persian Gulf, West Africa, the Sea of Japan, the Caribbean basin, the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean, the objective of retaining access to these areas is exceptionally well adapted for the limited use of military power. Provided the United States does not adopt unattainable goals as it did in Vietnam and, more recently, in Iraq, American aerospace and naval dominance can restrict the amount of force its ground forces must defeat in any of these regions. The principle value of a national military strategy that deliberately limits the commitment of U.S. military resources to attainable goals and objectives is that it avoids the kind of open-ended ideological crusade that nearly destroyed Europe in the 20th Century and drained the United States of considerable strength in the aftermath of the Vietnam conflict.

However, effective civilian control is vital to implement this strategy because the current generation of generals does not comprehend the use of force on a scale that is less than absolute. They cannot divorce themselves from the mythology of World War II, a mythology that enshrines total annihilation followed by occupation as the only option in war. In addition, the generals tend to equate their services' bureaucratic interests with those of the country when this is not necessarily the case.

When President Bush ran for office in 2000, he argued that new legislation on the scale of the 1947 National Security Act would be needed to confront the questions of how the Armed Forces are commanded and controlled: Who is in charge? Who has both the authority and the money to make decisions? How do we ensure the introduction of new methods of command, styles of leadership, and innovative organizations for combat? These questions were never answered because bureaucracies do not reform themselves. The Bush Administration's pressure on the generals to change was more bark than bite. No new leaders emerged. The old leaders stayed.

In 2001, the Bush defense team did what their predecessors did during the 1950s and the 1980s when big defense programs could be justified by a sense of national emergency-they spent money. Seduced by the influx of money into their districts, congress went along for the ride, writing big checks for fewer exotic airplanes, "newer" aircraft carriers and wildly expensive wheeled armored vehicles called Strykers - equipment designed for constabulary operations and peacekeeping - and the future combat system, an undefined collection of immature and untested technologies. Such general officer pet programs were not challenged or subjected by the appointed civilian leadership to rigorous testing or evaluation. In peacetime, the loss of time and money is regrettable, but in war it's lethal.

In April 2004 when opposition to the American military occupation became open rebellion, hundreds of American soldiers and marines were killed or wounded in combat. For a time, the violence across Iraq suspended romantic notions of small brigades of "networked" light infantry on wheels. For a time, it was "back to basics" including tanks, with lots of armored firepower, and net-centric capabilities applied as an enhancement to, not as a substitute for fighting power. But this dose of reality from the battlefield did not fundamentally change the thinking, organization or equipment of the Army and the Marines. While the lethality of every weapon in ground combat continues to rise as seen quite recently in Israel's fight with Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, the level of armor protection, firepower and off-road mobility for soldiers and marines continues to fall based on thinking about warfare that is delusional, thinking that exalts the dismounted rifleman inside networks that will provide perfect information.

Today, while we incur massive debts to our economic competitors in Northeast Asia a substantial amount of American defense spending is irrelevant to our needs and, the needs of the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines manning the force at the lowest level. This fact is conclusively demonstrated by our inability to control events on the ground in Iraq. Why? Years of easy victories over weak and incapable opponents in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans created the illusion of American military superiority that concealed bureaucratic bloat and run-away spending on Cold War programs. This practice of treating defense spending and policies with a mixture of abject neglect and as a means for legislators to redistribute income must end.

Today, unity of effort in military operations is more vital than ever and importance of minimizing losses in our ground forces cannot be over-stated. In a fiscally constrained environment, the nation does not need and cannot afford two land warfare services - the Army and the Marine Corps - that are both required to deliver ground forces by air and by sea to crises and conflicts.5 Together the active components of these forces number roughly 675,000, an impressive total by any standard.

However, the Marine Corps is organized to reenact World War II amphibious assaults against defended beaches and the Army contrary to its public claims remains wedded to the massive application of men and firepower inside organizations with their roots in World War II, organizations that include airborne divisions, armored divisions, motorized divisions that have no useful purpose in the modern era. In a strategic setting where technology and threats are causing missions to converge, the fundamental structures and purposes of these two services must be reexamined and, ultimately, reinvented. The point is that warfare, not America's ground forces, has already changed and that in view of warfare's transformation, conventional forces on the World War II model are not effective in waging it.

Today, any enemy that attempts to defend a beachhead will be targeted and destroyed from the air. The more likely scenario involves area denial operations that capitalize on sea mines and unmanned systems to protect critical approaches from the sea. This condition requires the capability to disembark from the air and the sea from points potentially hundreds of miles away and striking over land to reach the desired objectives. In addition, the proliferation of WMD makes the massing of large ground forces extremely dangerous necessitating the deployment of smaller ground forces that mobilize organic combat power disproportionate to their size and numbers.

Reorganizing the manpower and capabilities in these forces within an integrated, joint operational framework to provide a larger pool of ready, deployable ground forces that perform a range of missions is essential. These missions include striking inland from points along the periphery of Eurasia, Africa, Central and South America to destroy enemy regimes, WMD, long-range (strategic) weapons or temporarily seize key facilities or points on the ground; carry out armed reconnaissance operations, train and support allied forces; seize or liquidate terrorist cells and carry out non-combatant evacuations (NEOs).

These reorganized ground forces would become mobile, armored forces 6 with significant organic firepower, survivable and sustainable forces that do not present lucrative targets for WMD, and, most important, forces that go ashore in search of friends and allies, not just enemies. Neither intrusive nor permanent by design, the footprint of these mobile ground forces would signal both the limits of America's aims, as well as the futility of resistance to these aims.

Footnotes:
1 George F. Kennan. American Diplomacy. University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London, 1984
2 George F. Kennan. American Diplomacy. University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London, 1984. Kennan observed: "Perhaps our diplomacy of the first five decades of this century, and our reactions to the very different problems that have assailed us since 1950, both reflect realities much deeper than our responses of either period: namely, the lack of any accepted, enduring doctrine for relating military strength to political policy, and a persistent tendency to fashion our policy towards others with a view to feeding a pleasant image of ourselves rather than to achieving real, and desperately needed, results in our relations with others."
3 Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg News, Salt Lake City Desert Morning News, December 15, 2006, page 1.
4 William Anthony Hay, "Democratization, Order, and American Foreign," Policy E-Notes Distributed Exclusively via Fax & Email by the Foreign Policy Research Institute, April 28, 2006.
5 Of the $1.9 trillion the U.S. spent on weaponry between 1990 and 2005, adjusted for inflation, the Air Force received 36% and the Navy got 33%. The Army took in 16%. See Greg Jaffe, "Escalating Tab Despite Its $168 Billion Budget, The Army Faces a Cash Crunch," Wall Street Journal, December 11, 2006, page A1.

6 Melinda Liu, John Barry and Michael Hirsh, "The Human Cost: They were sent to fight for their country. But some GIs didn't have all they needed to protect themselves," News Week, 3 May 2004, page 31.