Kind of difficult to fight "2 Wars" after Clinton cut the Active duty Army by 4 Divisions during the 90's. And by the way, if the kid in the Iraqi uniform is really an Iraqi, I'm Bullwinkle the Moose.

WASHINGTON — The protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are forcing the Obama administration to rethink what for more than two decades has been a central premise of American strategy: that the nation need only prepare to fight two major wars at a time.

For more than six years now, the United States has in fact been fighting two wars, with more than 170,000 troops now deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. The military has openly acknowledged that the wars have left troops and equipment severely strained, and has said that it would be difficult to carry out any kind of significant operation elsewhere.

To some extent, fears have faded that the United States may actually have to fight, say, Russia and North Korea, or China and Iran, at the same time. But if Iraq and Afghanistan were never formidable foes in conventional terms, they have already tied up the American military for a period longer than World War II.

A senior Defense Department official involved in a strategy review now under way said the Pentagon was absorbing the lesson that the kinds of counterinsurgency campaigns likely to be part of some future wars would require more staying power than in past conflicts, like the first Iraq war in 1991 or the invasions of Grenada and Panama.

In an interview with National Public Radio last week, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates made it clear that the Pentagon was beginning to reconsider whether the old two-wars assumption “makes any sense in the 21st century” as a guide to planning, budgeting and weapons-buying.

The discussion is being prompted by a top-to-bottom strategy review that the Pentagon conducts every four years, as required by Congress and officially called the Quadrennial Defense Review. One question on the table for Pentagon planners is whether there is a way to reshape the armed forces to provide for more flexibility in tackling a wide range of conflicts.

Among other questions are the extent to which planning for conflicts should focus primarily on counterinsurgency wars like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, and what focus remains on well-equipped conventional adversaries like China and Iran, with which Navy vessels have clashed at sea.

Thomas Donnelly, a defense policy expert with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said he believed that the Obama administration would be seeking to come up with “a multiwar, multioperation, multifront, walk-and-chew-gum construct.”

“We have to do many things simultaneously if our goal is to remain the ultimate guarantor of international security,” Mr. Donnelly said. “The hedge against a rising China requires a very different kind of force than fighting an irregular war in Afghanistan or invading Iraq or building partnership capacity in Africa.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/washin....html?_r=1

It's not exactly news that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would've been over 5 yrs ago if we fought them like WWII.

I do bow to the varied acutal military skill and background on this board (hey, I was accepted to the waiting list at New London, which is the most "selective" academy!) but I would imagine that our Army and Air Force would need to be on a more "alert" level / status, more in line with how the Navy is always sailing the seven seas. I don't know how or if this is possible, but (real, not paper) fast reaction forces are the reality of the 21st century.

We need to get a fair number of troops on the ground in 30 days, with air support. That is my thought on how the next century will pan out. Again, not news to the people in charge, but I just don't see protracted tank-type battles on any front.

Of course, removing tanks from a battle plan immediately means that the next engagement will require........ tanks!

Problem is too many of our leaders and nation at large think our Adversaries think like we do. When you do that you can not anticipate things and then you get blind sided. you have to learn what makes them tick and how they think and rationalize things.

History is litered with people in the West thinking idealistically after we win some big war, then claim "History is over....no more real wars" only to get blind sided down the road.

Truth about Iraq was it should've been done the first time, when we had the military to do it right.

(03-16-2009 08:48 AM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  It's not exactly news that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would've been over 5 yrs ago if we fought them like WWII.

I do bow to the varied acutal military skill and background on this board (hey, I was accepted to the waiting list at New London, which is the most "selective" academy!) but I would imagine that our Army and Air Force would need to be on a more "alert" level / status, more in line with how the Navy is always sailing the seven seas. I don't know how or if this is possible, but (real, not paper) fast reaction forces are the reality of the 21st century.

We need to get a fair number of troops on the ground in 30 days, with air support. That is my thought on how the next century will pan out. Again, not news to the people in charge, but I just don't see protracted tank-type battles on any front.

Of course, removing tanks from a battle plan immediately means that the next engagement will require........ tanks!

Tanks are easy to store and warehouse though.

You are right. We need more self-contained, easily deployable units. We spend too much time setting up logistics and command infrastructure before we can deploy combat units. But we are making improvements.

The Marines are a perfect example of what is needed. Mobile, lean, self contained. They have their own attached tactical air units. And they can operate from either a land base or make an amphibious assault.

I have a feeling that the US will need more light infantry and airmobile forces for problems close to home. Latin America is going to hell in a hurry. If Mexico falls apart, we will have to militarize the southern border.

It takes something like 4 people to sustain 1 fighting trooper, so that means of the 170,000 deployed right now less than 50,000 are out in the field kicking ass. If the same ratio is used to protect our southern border when Mexico becomes unstable we'll need an awful lot of people in order to make it work.

It seems to me that we are looking at four strategic objectives:

1. Control the seas. The US currently enjoys this worldwide, perhaps even more so than the Brits did in 18th and 19th centuries. Navy to keep this.
2. Prevent growth of some other power to rival status--Russia, China would be the main two possibilities. We need to keep our army and air force strong enough to overcome any such rival, particularly in the area of strategic forces. Also try to take diplomatic steps to discourage or prevent. Finally, get our economy back into the value-added business, as that's really how we ultimately beat the Soviets.
3. Limit the expansion of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, particularly nuclear. Diplomacy probably the main weapon here. I would favor a US doctrine that we would reserve the right to treat any nuclear attack by anyone, on anyone else, anywhere, as if it were an attack on the US, and respond accordingly. That might at least deter some sabre rattling. Again, as with 2, if we take this approach then our strategic forces become critical.
4. Prevent attacks by rogue states or non-governmental groups. I would carve out this whole asymetric warfare mission and give it to the marines. Let them develop their strategy, tactics, and organizational structure around this mission.