fort lee presentation 26 march 2010: compatibility modes

7/29/2019 Fort Lee Presentation 26 March 2010: Compatibility Modes

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Potomac League LLCPotomac League LLCAgenda for DiscussionAgenda for Discussion

Its the Economy, again!Its the Economy, again!

What about Afghanistan,What about Afghanistan,raq an ranraq an ran

What about economy ofWhat about economy offorce?force?

What lies ahead?What lies ahead?

Final Thoughts forFinal Thoughts forConsiderationConsideration

A presentation byDouglas Macgregor, PhD

o one re . . rmyLead Partner, Potomac League, LLC26 March 2010

Command and General StaffColle e Class Intermediate-Level

Education class

Fort Lee, Virginia


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Potomac League LLCPotomac League LLC"The government doesn't have any money."The government doesn't have any money.

People seem to think the government has money," said former U.S. Comptroller GeneralDavid Walker. "The government doesn't have any money.

Carol Lochead, Concern grows over a fiscal crisis for U.S.

, .

Under the Obama Administrations proposal, using fairly optimistic assumptions about thefuture performance of the economy, the debt-to-GDP ratio would grow to 77 percent over thenext decade. However, the United States Debt to GDP Ratio is likely to reach 94% much,much sooner.

When gross external debt reaches 60 percent of GDP, annual growth declines by about two

percent; for levels of external debt in excess of 90 percent of GDP, growth rates are roughly.

growth outcomes Seldom do countries simply grow their way out of deep debt burdens.Carmen Rheinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, Growth in a Time of Debt, American Economic

Review Papers and Proceedings, 31 December 2009.

,the costs of current or future benefits. Unfunded liabilities are sky-rocketing.

Social CohesionSocial Cohesion, the condition that makes the USA a safe investment, is at risk.


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Potomac League LLCPotomac League LLC

"The government doesn't have any money."The government doesn't have any money.(continued)(continued)

The United States and Australia are the lowest performing countries with regard toequipment output for every dollar spent...

John T. Bennett, U.S. Last in Combat Gear Output Per Spent Dollar,

De ense News, 15 March 2010.

However, given the lack of analysis and planning that came with the 2010 budget, many ofus in Congress are concerned that the QDR will simply be a gigantic rubber-stamp for

,of our country.

Congressman Todd Akins (R-MO), QDR. An Honest Review? DoDBUZZ.Com, 2 August

2009.

Future economic crises may compel significant reductions in defense spending. USDefense Forces may have to be right-sized to the United States concrete security needsand interests without the inefficiencies and corruption in the current defense structure.

The United States cannot afford to maintain general purpose forces large enough toconquer, occupy and transform other peoples' societies into reflections of our own.


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Potomac League LLCPotomac League LLCWhat about Afghanistan?What about Afghanistan?

The proposed counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan is at present irrelevant to the goalof disrupting, dismantling and defeating al Qaeda, which is located in Pakistan. None of theplots in the West has any connection to any Afghan insurgent group, labeled under the

,

twenty years because of mutual resentment between al Qaeda foreigners and Afghanlocals Afghan fighters are parochial, have local goals and fight locally. They do not travelabroad and rarely within their own country. They are happy to kill Westerners in Afghanistan,

u ey are no a rea o es ern ome an s.Marc Sageman, M.D., Ph.D., Testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 7October 2009, Confronting al-Qaeda: Understanding the Threat in Afghanistan and Beyond.

Tim Russert: Is Afghanistan becoming a narco-state?

Hamid Karzai: No

Meet the Press, 24 September 2006.

Bottom LineBottom Line: Setting aside the 'War on Terror''War on Terror'rhetoric for a moment, if the US-led forces didachieve short-term military success in Afghanistan (whatever that is), what happens next?Exactly who are the United States and the NATO fighting for? What kind of people will runthe New Af hanistan?


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" "

What about Iraq?What about Iraq?

, ,Rohrbacher (R-CA) said. "Now that we know it cost a trillion dollars, and all of these years,and all of these lives all I can say is everyone I know thinks it was a mistake to go in now.

Daniel Tencer, GOP congressmen: Everyone agrees Iraq war a horrible mistake, The Raw Story, 19 March

2010.

Observers not steeped in Iraqi history might be bemused to find that six years after thetoppling of a dictator, after the death of several hundred thousand Iraqis, a brutal insurgency,trillions of wasted dollars and more than 4,000 dead US soldiers, the country is being rebuilta ong very am ar nes: concentrat on o power, s a owy nte gence serv ces ancorruption.

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Six years after Saddam Hussein, Nouri al-Maliki tightens his grip on Iraq, The

Guardian, 30 April 2009.

members of the Iraqi parliament's oil and gas committee have independently warnedthat the current contracts governing the Rumaila, Zubair and West Qurna (US and UK) dealsare illegal

Kyle B. Stelma, Managing Director, Dunia Frontier Consultants, Report: Private Foreign Direct Investment in, , .

Bottom LineBottom Line: Ankara and Tehran have likely agreed to spheres of influence when the U.S.departs Iraq. The Turks will control Iraqs Northern (Kurdish) Territory with its enormous oilwealth leaving Iran to control in S. Iraq through its Shiite Arab surrogates in Baghdad.


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Potomac League LLCPotomac League LLCWhat about Iran?What about Iran?

.already has it But to bomb is even less a solution.

Alastair Crooke, The power, and threat, of Iran, LA Times, 1 October 2009.

To a rowin number of Iranians, however, reli ious fundamentalism is a luxur the can nolonger afford. Half of them are under the age of 40 with no ideological connection to the Islamic

Revolution of 1979. Their difficulties and desires of life take precedence over doctrine anddogma.

Jamsheed Choksy, Iran's Theocracy Implodes, Realclearworld.com, 4 August 2009.

Shortly after helping host a large US exercise, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar announcedthey would not allow the US to use their bases or facilities to launch attacks on Iran

Marc V. Schanz, "No Support Against Iran," Aerospace World, June 2007.

Bottom LineBottom Line: Like most authoritarian regimes unless the Iranian States ruling elite isconvinced it will be expelled or liquidated as the result of a ground invasion by U.S. forces,

Iran will persist in its bid to become a nuclear power.

What the Obama Administration needs is a policy option between what Michael Howardcalled impotence or over kill, an alternative to an unaffordable all-out war with Iran.


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Potomac League LLCPotomac League LLCWhat about Economy of Force?What about Economy of Force?

Counter-terrorism works. Al Qaeda and its allies can no longer recruit as they did in the1990s. AQ is totally dependent on self-selected volunteers who will travel to Pakistan.

The terrorist threat to the U.S. and Euro e is from AQ ins ired home rown networks.Disrupting homegrown plots is a domestic counter-terrorism mission through domestic intelligence

and law enforcement.

Protection of the United States must involve a containment strategy. e proper m ary m ss on n g an s an an e sew ere s sanc uary en a . g ance rougspatial surveillance, networks of informants combined with the nearby stationing of a small forcededicated to physically eradicate any al Qaeda presence. In other cases Foreign Internal DefenseForeign Internal Defensemay

be appropriate).

The use of general purpose ground forces to occupy parts of Iraq and Afghanistan imposedsevere human and economic costs on the United States, its allies, and even our friends insidethe Islamic World. The approach is economically ruinous and politically unsustainable.

Bottom LineBottom Line: The winning construct as it equates to the establishment of Western-stylegovernment and free market economies is not relevant. In the Middle East, as well as inmost of Africa, Latin America, Central and Southwest Asia damage control is the mostrea s c goa or . . na ona m ary s ra egy, a s ra egy e ween mpo ence or overkill.


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Potomac League LLCPotomac League LLCWhat lies ahead? (Prediction is hazardous.)What lies ahead? (Prediction is hazardous.)

A single unexpected change in international relations, such as that of the Soviet-

German pact in 1939, had an influence on many relations in a way which.

Quincy Wright, A Study of War, page 1281.

en enera ac r ur was rmy e o a n , e no conc u e on e as sof American military interventions in Nicaragua, Haiti and China that wars of decisionwars of decisionwouldno longer occur. Instead, he prepared the Army as best he could to fight a future war of

decision without knowing precisely what it looked like.


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What lies ahead?What lies ahead?(continued)(continued)

Future conflicts will not resemble

Iraq. The world is deThe world is de--globalizing.globalizing.(Oswald Spengler, Culture and

comeback!)

Future wars are far more likely toresemble the Balkan Wars of theearly 20th Century, except that

fights for regional power andinfluence will overla with thecompetition for energy, water,

food, mineral resources and thewealth they create.

Directed Energy, robotics,nuclear weapons and othertechnolo ies will dramaticall alter

land warfare over the next 10-20

years.


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What about 21What about 21ststCentury Warfare?Century Warfare?

-development to acquire the weapons and recruit the military specialists to defend US society.

Mobile dispersed warfareMobile dispersed warfarewill be the dominant form of combat. Defined, continuous fronts on.

Ubiquitous strike capabilities and the proliferation of WMD make the concentration of largeground forces very dangerous. Prompt access to capabilities within an integrated, all armso erational architecture and self-contained tactical or anizations is the ke to success in mobilemobiledispersed warfaredispersed warfare.

Perfect Situational Awareness is an illusion! Forces should be network-enabled, not networkdependent! (Information fusion is much tougher than appreciated).

One size does not fit all diversity of capability is critical to success in warfare, but accuratedevastating firepower from tracked armored platforms will be vital to survival and victory in closecombat.

ter WW II, Eisenhower said, eparate ground, sea, and air war are is goneforever and he warned the Army-Navy Compromise Plan in the form of the1947 National Security Act was the embodiment of service systems of an erathat is no more.

During World War II, Churchill insisted, The chiefs of staff system leads to

weak or faltering decisions or rather indecision.


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Potomac League LLCPotomac League LLCFinal Thoughts for ConsiderationFinal Thoughts for Consideration

The objective in conflict or crisis is not to spend lots of American blood and treasure, butto spend as little as necessary in the shortest time possible! (Democratizing the IslamicWorld and eradicating poppy production in Afghanistan are "nice to have/nice to do," butthey are not attainable and they are not vital interests.)

The United States can avoid direct involvement in most 21st Century conflicts. (Off-shorepre-1914 UK Model)

defeat the original purpose of U.S. military action.

Homeland defense U.S. land borders and coastal waters will demand more and moremilitar resources to co e with criminalit and terrorism emanatin from the CaribbeanBasin and Mexico (Already an undeclared war.)

The United States must maintain general purpose military power as a hedge againstuncertainty, as insurance against the possibility the United States could be drawn into a

war of decisionwar of decisionit would otherwise choose not to fight, but we cannot maintain forceslarge enough to forcibly occupy and transform other peoples societies into reflections ofour own.

e cannot a or to ntervene nat on u . e wor oes not want t an t s not n ourvital strategic interest to do it. (Vietnam, Somalia, Haiti, the Balkans, Iraq etc.)

fort lee presentation 26 march 2010: compatibility modes

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