Quote Originally Posted by Ray View Post
And every article, commentary around the world and think tanks including the US and the Congressional Inquiries are totally bosh!
Not totally but pretty much; Congressional inquiries are common and laughable -- they are designed to give the appearance of great concern while eliciting votes. Most Think Tanks do not; Most news reports take their cue from US media whixh is among the worlds' most inept.
Even the Chinese who have mentioned that there is a plot to encircle them reported in their print media have no idea of what they are saying!! ...I presume that too is silly and stupid.
Not necessarily but I would remind you that the US and the USSR misread each other for over 50 years...
US does not plan ahead in time blocks of short term, medium term or long term?...There are no professionals in the US? All are politicians seeking survival?...That is news!
The news is not that the US does nor have such people. It does and many of them are quite knowledgeable -- the news is that they often disagree on things and that our form of government is by design adversarial, slow and full of checks and balances. We bicker and fiddle a lot. An awful lot. We only tend to focus totally during existential threat periods and we have had few of those. Our foreign policy is almost always based solely on US domestic politics. We have been able to afford that and a clunky, slow governmental process in the past and will almost certainly continue to do so. Whether that is wise today remains to be seen.
Have you read National energy Policy or Defence Policy Guidelines that was formulated during Dic.k Cheney's tenure as the Secretary of Defence?...Or were they also talking through their hat.
I read it back then, it was overstated and struck me as yet another exercise in policy skewing that would not work. Dick Cheney quite often talked through his hat, both as SecDef and VP. Most politicians around the world seem to do so in my observation.
How is force structuring and modernisation done? By Political Knee jerks?
More than any other one thing, yes. Amazing it works as well as it does.
There are known knowns; there are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.

right?
As always...