Thread: Proposed US Defense Budget Changes

Originally Posted by Mr. E

Oh, well there goes that part of my statement...

In that case, I have to say this is awful, not to mention terribly pessimistic. Ideally in a few years we'll be out of those countries and won't have to deal with insurgents again for a very long time. It is poor strategy to take investments out of programs that will help us in the long term and pump those investments into solutions to a short-term problem that isn't even really that big of a problem.

Ahhhh.. the thing is, insurgency/guerrilla warfare is almost certainly not going to end once we pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, to a large degree, it is probably going to be one of the dominant modes of warfare in the 21st century. It's not like Iraq/Afghanistan are minor detours and we'll get back to fighting old-fashioned conventional wars afterwards. Iraq and Afghanistan show us what a lot of conflict is going to be like in the coming decades: Asymmetrical, non-linear, low-intensity, and fought against an unconventional or irregular enemy.

EDIT: Don't get me wrong, I agree that it's important to preserve a strong conventional capability. Just because unconventional conflicts are going to be common in the coming decades doesn't mean conventional wars are a thing of the past. But that conventional capability has to be balanced with unconventional capabilities; we have to be able to do both well. I think the idea behind Gates' proposal is that our current defense budget is weighted too heavily towards conventional capabilities, to the detriment of our efforts in current and future unconventional conflicts, and he wants to move it more towards a balanced mid-point.

Originally Posted by Syme

Ahhhh.. the thing is, insurgency/guerrilla warfare is almost certainly not going to end once we pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, to a large degree, it is probably going to be one of the dominant modes of warfare in the 21st century. It's not like Iraq/Afghanistan are minor detours and we'll get back to fighting old-fashioned conventional wars afterwards. Iraq and Afghanistan show us what a lot of conflict is going to be like in the coming decades: Asymmetrical, non-linear, low-intensity, and fought against an unconventional or irregular enemy.

Call me an optimist, but I think so long as we don't stick our nose where it doesn't belong and don't do anything to make ourselves weaker (or look weaker) we probably won't have any more wars for a while. North Korea would be a threat, but they are too dumb to actually be legitimate, and if they keep on doing what they are doing the UN will eventually shut them down anyway. Iran would be a threat if they could possibly survive alienating themselves from the world (which they can't).

With a democrat in the White House we aren't going to be attacking anyone, and, strategically, the list of people who could legitimately attack us is a small list of people who would never do it, and China (who won't do it so long as they keep thinking our money is worth something).

EDIT: Well, that is a valid point about us being unbalanced. We proved that pretty quickly in Iraq. I can see moving some money out of combat vehicles and into personnel, but we don't want to overdo it either. I still think this move is too drastic. It would be better to make this a more gradual change if we're going to make it.