To: LindyBill who wrote (15933 ) 11/12/2003 2:31:29 PM From: JF Quinnelly Respond to That is an excellent article, capturing what I think are the dangers of Rumsfeld's tenure. Redundancy is important, it protects us from the unforeseen deficiencies of the weapons we pin our hopes on. That is the true lesson of the Maginot Line, IMO. Wars that actually threaten our national existence will be come-as-you-are affairs. There won't be time to tool up, as there was in 1941.Redundancy in war can yield flexibility and security. It ensures that when one system fails for whatever unforeseen reason, another can take its place. It provides the ability to meet unexpected challenges. In military affairs, redundancy is a virtue. The focus on efficiency and economics led to an effort to adopt "business practices" into the work of the military. This effort has a long history. Robert McNamara, himself a retired Ford Motor Co. executive, attempted to bring business models into the Pentagon in the 1960s. He applied new metrics to the Vietnam conflict, centering on body counts. He introduced a "game theory" approach to war in the form of "graduated pressure" in which military forces were explicitly used to send messages to the enemy, whose responses could then be predicted. In general he preferred the advice of his "whiz kids," who understood the new way of thinking, to that of the professional military officers who clung to the "outdated" modes of conducting war. The results of this approach are well known. The Rumsfeld vision of military transformation, therefore, is completely unbalanced. It will provide the U.S. with armed forces that do one thing only, even if they do it superbly well. They will be able to identify, track and destroy enemy targets from thousands of miles away and at little or no risk to themselves. The suite of capabilities that the transformation of the 1970s and 1980s provided will be narrowed into a confined band of excellence. The business model that brought success to many companies in the 1990s will be adopted as the basis for this transformation, and all of America's future success will rest upon this one capability and the applicability of this single model. It is one of the most seductive and dangerous visions of modern times.
