Future Defense Visions: February 2015

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Interview with Col. Douglas Macgregor (Ret.) about the state of US armed forces

February 24, 2015 by Campaign

This past weekend Right on Defense sent national security expert, decorated combat veteran, noted author and television commentator Col. Douglas Macgregor (Ret.) five questions about the state of the United States’ armed forces, current US operations in Iraq and Syria, and the size of the Pentagon’s budget. Many thanks to Col. Macgregor for responding to our request.

Right on Defense’s questions are in bold

Macgregor

What are the real threats the United States faces today and is our military, in its current state, able to confront these threats?

1.     China is too corrupt, too centrally managed, and most of its people have too little buying power for the PRC to remain economically healthy. As a result, China’s capacity to directly threaten its neighbors with military action is greatly exaggerated. China continues to view Japan as its principle threat. To the extent that Washington can it should mediate disputes and support freedom of access to the global commons, but otherwise avoid involvement in disputes between China and its neighbors.

2.     Russia confronts serious internal decay, institutionalized corruption and permanent threats from Islamists in the South and tension with Japan in NE Asia. However, thanks to its reactionary leadership, Russia is likely to menace the peoples of Eastern and Northern Europe for the next two decades. Like Poland in 1920, Ukraine refuses to die. Fortunately, unlike the Arabs, the Ukrainians are not asking us to fight for them. This means only a change in Moscow’s leadership can produce a reasonable territorial settlement with Kiev that acknowledges Ukraine’s independence. Until that happens, the US should support the freedom and independence of the peoples of Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic States with economic and military assistance, but otherwise avoid direct military involvement.

3.     In the ME Sunni and Shia are locked in a struggle that is likely to last for decades. ISIS is a critical part of this struggle. In addition, the dysfunctional character of the world’s Muslim states and societies guarantees unrelenting violence until exhaustion and conflict produce change. To the extent the US is able, the US should avoid involvement in this regional violence.

4.     Today, Mexico (along with much of Central America and Venezuela) qualifies as a failed states. The flow of criminality and human traffic from Mexico into the United States presents an existential threat to the American Republic. It is vital that we commit military resources to the security of our southern borders and littoral waters.

5.     Long-term, the United States must develop armed forces to deter or defeat capable opponents, not light constabulary ground and air forces designed to bludgeon hapless Arabs, Afghans and Africans.

Bottom Line: The dysfunctional societies of Latin America present the greatest security threat to the United States. In the near-term ignoring the metastasizing cancer of criminality and corruption spreading into the US from Latin America could kill the American Republic.

In the long-term we cannot predict what nation-state or alliance of nation-states may attempt to dominate the Eurasian Land Mass and the “global commons.” We can only conclude that such a development is possible in 10, 15 or 20 years and begin preparing for it now without necessarily bankrupting ourselves in the process. To do that we need institutions and leadership we currently lack in national security.

How would you reform the military so that it is best able to confront these threats?

First, today, we have a president and SECDEF that must referee four independent services with conflicting agendas. Our defense structure is simply an anachronism left over from WW II. Its principle function is to redistribute income to districts, states, politicians and industrialists, not to effectively defend the United States. We need new leadership to address this critical issue and there is none for the moment on the horizon.

Second, in the absence of a national military strategy based on a rational defense budget the various services are operating independently. Each service seeks to justify itself and subsidize itself in perpetuity avoiding any change that might alter the status quo. Without a national defense staff that has the operational responsibility and authority to assist the President, the Secretary of Defense with command of the armed forces, the development of a coherent national defense strategy and the implementation of a rational defense budget tied to real national security interests this condition will not change.

Third, there is no human capital strategy to provide a national defense staff with the talent it needs to function effectively. There is also no real human capital strategy beyond the service academies to staff the armed forces with the leadership they need. Promotions to senior rank are a hit or miss proposition depending on personalities and political preferences. Enlisted ranks are treated with abject neglect on the assumption that more qualified enlisted men will always show up to do the job. There is scant evidence to support this assumption, but it prevails inside the uniformed leadership nonetheless.

What are your thoughts about current US military operations in Iraq and Syria?

These operations are unnecessary and largely counterproductive. The forces at war in the region will eventually exhaust themselves if left alone to do so. If we continue to intervene we will lengthen and worsen the conflicts. Our involvement should be limited to assistance to Egypt and Jordan, both of whom share our broader strategic interest in ending conflict. The rest including Turkey and Iran have agendas that are antithetical to Western and Israeli interests.

Jeb Bush and others have said that the Pentagon needs more money to be able to confront the threats they perceive the US faces. Shouldn’t the US be able to defend itself with the Pentagon’s $499 billion base budget and the additional $51.9 billion Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) budget?

As previously mentioned, there is an abundance of resources and money, but neither the realistic thinking, the structure nor the vision to employ these resources effectively.

Many people say that OCO is being used as a “slush fund” of sorts to pay for things that should be in the Pentagon’s base budget. What are your thoughts about OCO?

OCO should be scrapped ASAP. It’s welfare for the defense industries.

Do you think that Congress and the military are doing enough to weed out wasteful spending at the Pentagon?

Despite vociferous claims to the contrary, nothing of consequence is being done.

http://rightondefense.org/

his past weekend Right on Defense sent national security expert, decorated combat veteran, noted author and television commentator Col. Douglas Macgregor (Ret.) five questions about the state of the United States’ armed forces, current US operations in Iraq and Syria, and the size of the Pentagon’s budget. Many thanks to Col. Macgregor for responding to our request.
Right on Defense’s questions are in bold.
- See more at: http://rightondefense.org/#sthash.rmRSXFEb.dpuf

February 24, 2015 by Campaign

This past weekend Right on Defense sent national security expert, decorated combat veteran, noted author and television commentator Col. Douglas Macgregor (Ret.) five questions about the state of the United States’ armed forces, current US operations in Iraq and Syria, and the size of the Pentagon’s budget. Many thanks to Col. Macgregor for responding to our request.
Right on Defense’s questions are in bold.
What are the real threats the United States faces today and is our military, in its current state, able to confront these threats?
1.     China is too corrupt, too centrally managed, and most of its people have too little buying power for the PRC to remain economically healthy. As a result, China’s capacity to directly threaten its neighbors with military action is greatly exaggerated. China continues to view Japan as its principle threat. To the extent that Washington can it should mediate disputes and support freedom of access to the global commons, but otherwise avoid involvement in disputes between China and its neighbors.
2.     Russia confronts serious internal decay, institutionalized corruption and permanent threats from Islamists in the South and tension with Japan in NE Asia. However, thanks to its reactionary leadership, Russia is likely to menace the peoples of Eastern and Northern Europe for the next two decades. Like Poland in 1920, Ukraine refuses to die. Fortunately, unlike the Arabs, the Ukrainians are not asking us to fight for them. This means only a change in Moscow’s leadership can produce a reasonable territorial settlement with Kiev that acknowledges Ukraine’s independence. Until that happens, the US should support the freedom and independence of the peoples of Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic States with economic and military assistance, but otherwise avoid direct military involvement.
3.     In the ME Sunni and Shia are locked in a struggle that is likely to last for decades. ISIS is a critical part of this struggle. In addition, the dysfunctional character of the world’s Muslim states and societies guarantees unrelenting violence until exhaustion and conflict produce change. To the extent the US is able, the US should avoid involvement in this regional violence.
4.     Today, Mexico (along with much of Central America and Venezuela) qualifies as a failed states. The flow of criminality and human traffic from Mexico into the United States presents an existential threat to the American Republic. It is vital that we commit military resources to the security of our southern borders and littoral waters.
5.     Long-term, the United States must develop armed forces to deter or defeat capable opponents, not light constabulary ground and air forces designed to bludgeon hapless Arabs, Afghans and Africans.
Bottom Line: The dysfunctional societies of Latin America present the greatest security threat to the United States. In the near-term ignoring the metastasizing cancer of criminality and corruption spreading into the US from Latin America could kill the American Republic.
In the long-term we cannot predict what nation-state or alliance of nation-states may attempt to dominate the Eurasian Land Mass and the “global commons.” We can only conclude that such a development is possible in 10, 15 or 20 years and begin preparing for it now without necessarily bankrupting ourselves in the process. To do that we need institutions and leadership we currently lack in national security.
How would you reform the military so that it is best able to confront these threats?
First, today, we have a president and SECDEF that must referee four independent services with conflicting agendas. Our defense structure is simply an anachronism left over from WW II. Its principle function is to redistribute income to districts, states, politicians and industrialists, not to effectively defend the United States. We need new leadership to address this critical issue and there is none for the moment on the horizon.
Second, in the absence of a national military strategy based on a rational defense budget the various services are operating independently. Each service seeks to justify itself and subsidize itself in perpetuity avoiding any change that might alter the status quo. Without a national defense staff that has the operational responsibility and authority to assist the President, the Secretary of Defense with command of the armed forces, the development of a coherent national defense strategy and the implementation of a rational defense budget tied to real national security interests this condition will not change.
Third, there is no human capital strategy to provide a national defense staff with the talent it needs to function effectively. There is also no real human capital strategy beyond the service academies to staff the armed forces with the leadership they need. Promotions to senior rank are a hit or miss proposition depending on personalities and political preferences. Enlisted ranks are treated with abject neglect on the assumption that more qualified enlisted men will always show up to do the job. There is scant evidence to support this assumption, but it prevails inside the uniformed leadership nonetheless.
What are your thoughts about current US military operations in Iraq and Syria?
These operations are unnecessary and largely counterproductive. The forces at war in the region will eventually exhaust themselves if left alone to do so. If we continue to intervene we will lengthen and worsen the conflicts. Our involvement should be limited to assistance to Egypt and Jordan, both of whom share our broader strategic interest in ending conflict. The rest including Turkey and Iran have agendas that are antithetical to Western and Israeli interests.
Jeb Bush and others have said that the Pentagon needs more money to be able to confront the threats they perceive the US faces. Shouldn’t the US be able to defend itself with the Pentagon’s $499 billion base budget and the additional $51.9 billion Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) budget?
As previously mentioned, there is an abundance of resources and money, but neither the realistic thinking, the structure nor the vision to employ these resources effectively.
Many people say that OCO is being used as a “slush fund” of sorts to pay for things that should be in the Pentagon’s base budget. What are your thoughts about OCO?
OCO should be scrapped ASAP. It’s welfare for the defense industries.
Do you think that Congress and the military are doing enough to weed out wasteful spending at the Pentagon?

- See more at: http://rightondefense.org/#sthash.rmRSXFEb.dpuf

February 24, 2015 by Campaign

- See more at: http://rightondefense.org/#sthash.rmRSXFEb.dpuf

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Beyond Bribery

Argument

It’s time to start fighting the most insidious form of corruption -- the kind that’s legal.

By Janine R. Wedel

February 17, 2015

Last month Greeks delivered a sharp blow to the European Union by voting in the left-wing Syriza Party, which has vowed to end years of painful austerity policies. But Syriza owes much of its popularity for its opposition to something else: elite corruption. As one news report put it, “Many in Greece feel slashed public spending has hit the most vulnerable hardest, while leaving… corruption of the apparent elites untouched.”

This sense that something on high smells bad has galvanized protesters in recent years in countries as different as Brazil, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United States. They seem to share an intuitive sense that the system is gamed against them, that it compromises their livelihoods and futures, and that it makes it harder to have their voices heard, let alone discover who is responsible. (The photo shows Occupy Wall Street protesters in Chicago on the eve of the May 2012 NATO summit.)

Petty corruption, such as having to pay a bribe to a bureaucrat or customs official, also leads to discontent around the world. Some scholars call this “need corruption,” because it is driven by everyday people trying to navigate an impossible system to receive basic goods and services. And since corruption became a “hot” issue in the 1990s, global efforts to combat it have concentrated largely on this need corruption, with major players like the World Bank and Transparency International at the forefront.

But it’s often the corruption of elite insiders, not petty bribery, that most foments distrust of leaders and public institutions. As I describe in my new book, this “new corruption” may be less visible, but it is practiced on a wide scale by a set of global power brokers who have rigged the system to their advantage in innovative ways. The worldwide protests triggered by this form of corruption are proof that a growing number of people have turned into disaffected outsiders, all too aware that they stand squarely apart from this system of power and influence. This is the most damaging and far-reaching form of corruption that exists today. And this “new corruption” — difficult to detect, but insidious — deserves our attention.

The essence of this new (legal) corruption –- the violation of public trust – harks back to ancient notions of corruption. Yet its practitioners follow a thoroughly 21st-century playbook, written over the past few decades as privatization, deregulation, the end of the Cold War, and the advent of the digital age have transformed the world. These developments have broken down barriers and created new openings for elites to exercise their power and influence in a system that is more complex and opaque than ever, enabling them to use the levers of power to their own advantage while, at the same time, denying responsibility. (Many bankers, for example, trade in derivatives so complex that even they can plausibly deny understanding them.)

Practitioners of the new corruption assume a tangle of roles that fuses state and private sectors. They abrogate public trust by working on behalf of their own, instead of those on whose behalf they purport to act. Just think of Goldman Sachs, often derided as “Government Sachs” for its seamless enmeshing of Wall Street and Washington. In the years leading up to the financial crash of 2008, Goldman routinely pushed the envelope — such as the notorious ABACUS case, in which the bank sold investments it knew were bad to one client at the behest of another. Yet the company apparently broke few or no laws along the way. Goldman also famously helped Greece (and possibly other struggling European countries) hide debt in the early 2000s. When the day of reckoning came for Greece, it wasn’t Goldman Sachs, elite insiders, or national leaders who paid the price of slashing austerity measures.

That the system is rigged in new ways resounds worldwide, even in the West. There’s a documented loss of confidence in formal institutions: governments, parliaments, courts, banks, corporations, the media. A 2014 research project attempted to quantify how gamed the system is in the United States. Two political scientists looked at 1,779 policy issues hashed out from 1981 to 2002 and found that policies widely supported by economically elite Americans were adopted about 45 percent of the time. If these same privileged Americans didn’t support particular policies, then their rate of acceptance dropped to 18 percent. The scholars write: “The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites… have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”

In the United States and many European countries, then, the new corruption appears to have surpassed the old. How can it be that bribes and blatant illegality have come to matter more than insider elites who betray our trust but go mostly unscrutinized, let alone unsanctioned?

Clues can be found in the evolution of the post-Cold War “anti-corruption industry,” which I witnessed firsthand in the 1990s as an anthropologist in Eastern Europe and occasional World Bank consultant. With economists as its intellectual leaders, the industry focused primarily on need corruption, which lends itself more neatly to the models and metrics they favor. The industry — using the prevailing World Bank definition of corruption, “the abuse of public office for private gain,” often taken to mean simple bribery — enjoyed its heyday in the late 1990s, when the American economy was roaring, despite market tremors overseas. In this heady atmosphere, anti-corruption economists and activists, along with their brethren in the business and investment community, strove to crack the problem of corruption in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. They sought to “do good” by making countries “out there” more hospitable to investment. “Crony capitalism” applied only to certain Asian countries (following the financial crisis that had swept the region) and perhaps some post-Soviet ones, not to any place in the West.

Yet Washington insiderism and Wall Street malfeasance were already thriving, only to reach their calamitous peak in 2008. While some noted economists served as handmaidens for investment banks, regulatory institutions, and credit-rating agencies as these institutions engaged in some of the boldest violations of the public trust in history, other well-intentioned members of the same profession were acting as the brains of the anti-corruption industry.
Economists at the World Bank and Transparency International had devised metrics to make sense of corruption in terms of a single number or score. TI was making its mark with its annual Corruption Perceptions Index, which garnered extensive media attention and helped put and keep the organization on the map. The CPI measures corruption in countries around the world, as perceived by experts and business leaders. A single score, the story lines imply, conveys the corruption of an entire country. Ordering countries by rank shows us how they compare to each other. In 1999, a typical year, Scandinavian and Western European countries ranked the highest, meaning the most “clean,” with the United States not far behind. Economies like Indonesia, Nigeria, and Cameroon were at or close to the bottom.

It’s easy to see the appeal of corruption-as-bribery and of ranking systems. Single numbers are easy to grasp, seductive in their clarity, and welcome fodder to media and pundits.

But is this in the public interest? The low-level functionary in a non-Western country is disparaged or even punished for taking bribes that feed his family. Meanwhile, prestige-cloaked practitioners of the new corruption whose undisclosed roles and influence help shape policy and whose actions have a far greater impact on our health, habitat, and pocketbooks, get a pass.

My point is not that the corruption targets of the economists and World Bank-and-TI establishment were wrong. To the contrary. But anti-corruption efforts, scholarship, and solutions were focused so narrowly that, by definition, the new corruption and the massive unaccountability inherent in it were essentially excluded. However well-intentioned some of the anti-corruption economists and their acolytes may have been, their narrow view of corruption offered the perfect intellectual cover — and enabled them to ignore the new corruption right under their noses.

With many of our experts and leaders giving us plenty of reason not to trust them, is it any wonder that public opinion polls show that people’s trust in leaders and institutions has plummeted? Or that Greece’s electorate would vote for new, untested leadership, possibly risking the country’s place in the EU? What is happening today is that the systems in place are (inadvertently) generating outsiders en masse (think the huge percentage of unemployed Greek youth). And these outsiders, understandably, have scant faith in the system.

The result is a pervasive feeling of helplessness, fatalism, and gallows humor strikingly similar to the mood I observed as a young anthropologist in Eastern Europe during late communism. Witness the trenchant headline from one website when Goldman Sachs settled its notorious ABACUS case with the U.S. government: “BREAKING — Goldman Did Not Break Any of Those Laws It Wrote.”

Today we run the risk of creating a permanent class of outsiders. That is one reason we need to redefine corruption as violation of the public trust and not just as bribery or illegal behavior. This reconceptualization will move us toward reestablishing the broken connection between people on the ground and public institutions.

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/17/beyond-bribery-corruption/

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Our Army’s Headed for Collapse Here’s how to fix it.

When markets crash, when economic indicators fall by double digits, investors panic, stocks drop like rocks and governments teeter on the brink of collapse. Unable to understand the sudden break in prosperity, the public asks what happened; politicians hold hearings, financial institutions are investigated and, eventually, “too-big-to jail” financial wizards go to prison. At least, that’s what happened in the years after the 1929 crash.

Similar conditions emerge when the United States Armed Forces are defeated in ways that the government and the media cannot conceal. In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, captains and majors like Matthew Ridgway, James Gavin and Bruce Clarke—men who would have otherwise ended their careers in obscurity—were promoted, eventually rising to flag rank in time to command the men who came ashore at Normandy in June 1944, 70 years ago this week.

Yet, in most cases, markets don’t suddenly collapse and neither do armies. Instead, armies, like markets, decline gradually. The public seldom notices until it’s too late.

In October 2013, Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno claimed that cuts in the Army’s total annual budget of $125.2 billion, including $37.8 billion for readiness, made it impossible for an active Army of 550,000 troops to provide more than two brigades ready to fight. In March 2014, when 80,000 Russian armored combat forces were poised to invade Ukraine, the U.S. Army was incapable of deploying an effective combat maneuver force to Europe or anywhere else.

How did this happen? How could an Army of 550,000 with 32,000 troops in Afghanistan’s forward operating bases fail to provide more than two combat-ready brigades, roughly 8,000 men under arms, to deploy and fight?

The answer is deceptively simple: It’s by design.

In 1950, before the outbreak of the Korean War, the U.S. Army had 593,167 soldiers on active duty. Despite the impressive numbers, Army divisions contained hollow brigades and regiments, units with only two-thirds of their combat power. Armor was almost non-existent and artillery was sparse. Task Force Smith, a force of riflemen with light, towed artillery from the Army’s 24th Infantry Division, was quickly defeated and overrun by 90,000 attacking North Korean troops with 300 T-34/T-85 tanks in July 1950.

But the architects of the defeat were not President Harry Truman, Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson or the U.S. Congress. In 1950, the architects of defeat were the four-star generals who wanted an Army designed to provide jobs for generals, not to fight. To cope with the crisis the hollow Army created, Truman added 400,000 soldiers to the Army, including thousands of World War II veterans.

Fast forward to the contemporary Army and it bears a discomfiting resemblance to the Army that deployed to fight in Korea. Today’s Army, with an annual base budget, in fiscal year 2014, of $129.7 billion and a force of 550,000, is incapable of fighting a 21st century opponent with armies, air forces, air defenses and missile forces. And yet, when you include the estimated $30-40 billion for “overseas contingency operations,” today’s Army easily outspends the Army that by 1953 totaled 1 million men and fielded 201,000 soldiers in Korea.

Today, given the structure of the contemporary Army, it’s doubtful that $134 billion—the budget of the 1953 Army, in 2014 dollars—would buy that same level of force. Consider that during World War II, 11 million American soldiers were commanded by just 4 four-star generals. Today, the Army of 550,000 has 11 active-duty four stars, each of which comes with massive amounts of overhead. This makes no sense. If the Army were a rowboat with nine passengers, four would steer, three would call cadence and two would man the oars.

The solution is obvious: Reorganize and reform the U.S. Army to provide more ready, deployable combat power. Consolidate more combat power under fewer headquarters. Flatten the command structure and reduce the overhead. It’s not rocket science. The Japanese Self Defense Force has already done it.

While the U.S. Army’s overhead absorbs 31 percent of its officer and soldier strength, the Japanese general officer overhead consumes only 6 percent. With a budget and manpower roughly a third the size of the U.S. Army’s, the Japanese ground force’s combat formations of 6-7,000 field more ready deployable combat power than the U.S. Army does.

Russia’s Army has moved in similar directions. Today, the country that fielded more divisions than any other nation in history has disbanded its divisions. Instead, it fields 80 5-6,000 man combat formations under generals. By 2019, the number is expected to rise to 200! These formations report directly to a three-star corps commander who is expected to command joint operations.

Here’s the lesson: Shrinking the U.S. Army to fewer divisions and brigade combat teams, without any commensurate increase in fighting power or cost savings, is the wrong answer. Realigning brigades with the 10 divisions of the 1990s Cold War Army is a step backward, not forward. Congress must intervene in the process and compel fundamental change or face another Task Force Smith in the not-too-distant future. Fortunately, the blueprint for action already exists.

As outlined in Breaking the Phalanx and Transformation under Fire, my two books on military transformation, an Army consisting of capability-based expeditionary fighting formations would contain 51 combat formations of 5-6,000 troops under brigadier generals. Organized around the critical functions of Maneuver, Strike, ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) and Sustainment (logistics), these combat formations would be designed to operate autonomously on land like warships at sea, all within the ISR-Strike framework of aerospace and naval power under joint command.

Inside an Army of 420,000 soldiers, the resulting fighting force would consist of four corps equivalents of 55,000 men each, each corps equivalent ready to surge in part or in total from a joint rotational readiness base, not from a Cold War-era, “tiered” readiness posture as they are today. The reorganized Army’s overhead would be reduced from 31 percent to 8 percent of the force.

Such an Army would also be aligned with air and sea transport for rapid response to the unexpected: a Korea-like emergency; a Sarajevo-like event; or deployments to support allies already engaged in fighting, not counterinsurgency or nation building. Events in Ukraine and the Western Pacific point to future wars that will not resemble the interventions in Iraq or Afghanistan. Instead, they will involve conflicts as lethal as Korea or World War II, fights for regional power and influence that overlap with interstate competitions for energy, water, food, mineral resources and the wealth they create.

The Army four stars, active and retired, will collectively groan, “It’s too hard and will take too long to change the Army.” Well, it is true that building combat power takes time. But it’s useful to remember that only eight months after Gen. George C. Marshall received the executive order in March 1942 empowering him to reorganize the War Department, he was able to land a brand new Army on the shores of North Africa.

The point is simple: The U.S. Army is unraveling. As Peter Drucker told businessmen in the 1990s, “If you want something new, stop doing something old.” Congress must act. There is no need to fill Arlington Cemetery to capacity.

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