Hello Hawkmoon Ron, <<That's going to take time, and effort.. as well as blood and treasure..>>
Hang in there, help is on the way, courtesy of Rumsfeld's strategic initiative, and if his boss is chucked out, Kerry will no doubt have different ideas, and if that fails to work, we go to Plan C ... in any and all cases, do not worry ...
stratfor.com
Geopolitical Diary: Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2004
President George W. Bush announced today that he was planning to realign the deployment of U.S. forces around the world. Approximately 60,000-70,000 troops are to be withdrawn from European and Asian bases within the next 10 years. There is no real surprise here. While the president gave relatively few details, other sources, obviously authorized to leak, said forces would be sent to Eastern Europe and back to the United States.
It is good to know that U.S. forces will no longer stand watch at the Fulda Gap waiting for the Soviet thrust. Actually, while we enjoyed saying that, the reason for keeping troops in Germany was not as foolish at it appeared. The United States already had basing facilities in Germany, and Europe was a good staging area for operations in the Middle East. Keeping them in Europe could actually speed up their deployment.
There are two reasons for the redeployment. One is political. The United States not only wants to punish Germany for its position on Iraq, but also has reached the conclusion that Germany is an unreliable ally. That is to say: German and American interests have diverged. The United States is afraid there will come a crisis in which the Germans will prohibit the use of its facilities for the direct shipment of troops. The Germans would not hold the troops hostage, but they could force the United States to transship troops through a third country, increasing the complexity of deployment. That is not inconceivable and Washington just doesn't want to risk it.
The second reason has to do with force structure -- or lack of it. One of the things the president said today was that the United States would be taking advantage of 21st-century technologies to facilitate the rapid deployment of forces throughout the world. This would mean, in effect, that the same or a lesser number of troops would be able to carry out more missions. Hence, by bringing forces back to the continental United States and marrying them up with new force projection technology, the troops would have increased mobility.
The problem here is that the primary need at the moment is not increased strategic mobility of troops, but increased numbers of troops. In Iraq, getting to the battlefield was a problem. But occupying Iraq proved an even greater challenge -- one not amenable to strategic mobility enhancements. Pacification requires more troops, not more technology.
The president's statement indicates that Donald Rumsfeld's influence on defense policy remains powerful and that the basic design of the force remains unchanged. Put bluntly, Rumsfeld is still focused on speed in getting troops to the battlefield -- not on having enough troops available to prevail on the battlefield, both during the high-intensity phase and the follow-on counterinsurgency/pacification phase.
The proof that the administration is still not coming to grips with the lessons learned from Iraq can be found in the redeployment's time frame. In a global war, troops must be moved in weeks and months. This redeployment plan still thinks in terms of years. The dichotomy in which the United States engages in a global war while force structure is still addressed in peacetime time frames remains oddly in place. Global troop movements are simply taking too long to affect events on the battlefield.
Consider this. The Venezuelans held a referendum yesterday in which President Hugo Chavez won. Washington actually breathed a sigh of relief over his victory because -- in spite of the fact he is opposed by Washington -- the threat of destabilization should he have lost was too great a risk. Venezuela is a main source of oil, and Chavez's victory assured that supply.
Hidden behind this is another reality. The United States needed Chavez to win because his victory was the greatest guarantor of stability, and the United States does not have enough forces available to intervene in Venezuela should chaos break out. The lack of sufficient troops is now shaping U.S. policy. Washington is rooting for political opponents because it has no real capacity for intervention should instability result.
This is not an argument for intervening in Venezuela. We are simply pointing out that the policy choices available to the United States are evaporating along with the force. Even if a smaller force could rapidly deploy to defeat an enemy, what we have learned is that the old problem of controlling the defeated country is not amenable to technology. The president's speech indicated that the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq still have not penetrated the planning cells of the Pentagon. We find that interesting.
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