What we support and defend

[Ken White]

The Marines are just a duplicate Army...It will be the same thing and will fulfill the same function.

Signed:

Carl (the ill informed, un-American Chicken hawk.)

I dunno about the un-american or the Chicken Hawk bit but that comment is quite ill informed with respect to what Marines are and do. And can do -- legally under US Law and International norms. There's also a significant difference in support, equipment, training and capabilities. Successive Congresses have expanded the post WW II Marine Corps of 100K to its current size for some good (and bad...) reasons.

There's also a reason they get to have and keep their own fixed wing combat aviation elements, something the Army would dearly like to have but does not.

Yet again, you need to do more research and think harder. This stuff isn't nearly as simple as you seem to wish it to be...

[Bob's World]

Carl,

While it is true the Marines became more "Army-like" to deal with the scale of their opertions in WWII, and to tailor to the Soviet threat of the Cold War, the USMC is a very different organization with a very different purpose than the Active Army. Particularly in times of peace (and yes, though we have troops in combat in several locations fighting wars of choice currently, our nation is indeed at peace).

How much USMC we need in times of peace is a wholly different equation from how much Army we need in times of peace. My point is that too many, to include yourself, see them as essentially being the same thing. They aren't.

The Active Army's peacetime mission is essentially to be "seed corn" for the next war. Maintain a cadre of professional to build a war fighting army around, write doctrine, and maintain a small number of "ready to go now" units trained, organized and equipped for major land warfare. We would be foolish to in effect "eat our seed corn" by totally disbanding the army, but equally foolish to maintain too large of an Army for several reasons, many listed above.

I don't know how we can accurately assess the damage done to our system of balance between the Executive and the Congress due to the possession of a standing Army over the past 60 years. But power has indeed shifted, and any such shift is also a shift of power from the American people to the the American President. If we want a powerful executive who can disregard the Congress and the American people to commit the nation to conflicts that he or she personally thinks is important, then having a large Army on the self serves that purpose. But if instead we are still a nation that believes the voice and will of the people is important in such matters, then we have gotten off track.

There is value in a President having to go to Congress, hat in hand, and make a successful argument for why he or she believes it is so vital to the national interests that we fund, recruit, train and deploy an Army to wage warfare against some foreign state or populace. Often the Congress will reply "No." At which point the service chiefs will be required to develop more sophisticated military COAs, and the Sec State will have to resume lead for foreign policy once again. Maybe we will learn to lead with something other than a right cross.

This will also empower our Allies to step up to secure their own interests. Does anyone think that the Saudis, Japanese, South Koreans, Europeans or Taiwanese are any less capable of funding their own national security than we are? Does anyone think this bill should be subsidized primarily by American debt rather than by the current resources of the countries affected most?

America is not made stronger by having a large standing peacetime Army, but it has made us more of a bully.

The world is not made safer by having a large standing peacetime Army, but it has enabled our allies to invest in their own economies while we subsidize their collective defense.

Larger question is where does the Air Force fit in? As a son of the Army, the Air Force arguably fall under the same line of logic. That Naval air covers peacetime requirements for tactical operations, and the Air Force focus on strategic missions and on being prepared to expand to produce a warfighting Air Force.

It is time to hit that "re-set button" the President keeps talking about here at home first, and DoD is a good place to start. Congress should demand it, as it is the restoration of Congressional power that will be a primary effect of such a rebalancing.

[Fuchs]

The world is not made safer by having a large standing peacetime Army, but it has enabled our allies to invest in their own economies while we subsidize their collective defense.

That's a popular myth among Americans.


Fact is that the U.S. military is so suboptimal for defence of U.S. allies an, so wasteful and so oversized that only a fraction of your military budget is really relevant to the security of U.S. allies.


Furthermore, implicit assumption that Allies would spend more if the U.S. spent less is in stark contrast with the demonstrated irrationality of military spending dimensioning in the world.
Greece has recently cut its military budget by much. I have no idea what threat disappeared, so I have to assume that the budget was irrationally oversized previously.

Governments appear to design the military budget in order to maximize it up to a certain pain threshold in most situations. Economy tanks? Pain threshold goes down, military spending goes down. no relation whatsoever with threats or allies. And so on.

The only area where the U.S. really substituted for its allies' military power is in regard to former axis great powers' (Germany, Italy, Japan) nuclear weapons. I am strongly assuming that this price was one that the U.S. paid happily and fully in its own interest.



Last but not least: The U.S. Army, three quarters of the U.S. Navy plus the last quarter of its amphibious warfare ships, two thirds of the U.S. Air Force, all U.S.Marines and even 90% of U.S. nukes could disappear today and the security situation of the European allies would not have changed substantially. It's all surplus.

[carl]

Bob Jones:

All of the points you raise are the points that are raised, and should be raised, when there are one of those times when we are winding down a military effort and want to reduce military spending and have to decide how to split up the money. Some of the things you say I would disagree with more or less as with some of the phenomanon (sic) you identify, but the points are all valid starting places for argument.

As far as the Marines go, I know they have done their best to carve out a different place and identity for themselves in the US over the last 100 years. They have done a very good job of it too. But to me I think of it as I imagine a foreigner would think of if. If US Army disappeared tomorrow and the US Navy was then designated the US Army, the foreign observer would say no, that's not an army, that's a navy. If you did the same thing with the Army and the Marines, that foreign observer may not even notice. I think that is accurate now. Whether to change all that and what big Army does is one of those things that needs to be worked out.

I agree with the people who say serious consideration should be given to doing something different than what is sometimes done, just cutting everybody equally to equalize the squalling and wait till the budgets get bigger again. We should actually think about re-organizing radically and see what kind of cuts might come from that.

The thing i would really like to see change that may have nothing to do with budget allocations is to effect a change in the command culture of the American military. From my viewpoint it doesn't seem to be a very good one. Maybe hard times caused by budget woes could be used as a tool to do that.

One more thing, we have gone over some of the advantages of having a big standing Army. But there is something that is lost that may have to do with the Army being big. I think it is the ability to adapt to circumstances, to adapt. When the Army was little it was able to adapt to wholly different types of fighting so that they were able to do good enough. Frontier fighting in the 1850s, big big war in the 1860s, frontier fighting again till the 1890s, then conquering islands and subduing insurrections, then big big big overseas industrial war, then back to overseas insurrections, then WWII, all these were fought by guys who made the transition from the one to the other to the other. Maybe our inability to adapt as well as we did in the past doesn't have to do with military being huge, but maybe it does.

[carl]

I dunno about the un-american or the Chicken Hawk bit but that comment is quite ill informed with respect to what Marines are and do. And can do -- legally under US Law and International norms. There's also a significant difference in support, equipment, training and capabilities. Successive Congresses have expanded the post WW II Marine Corps of 100K to its current size for some good (and bad...) reasons.

There's also a reason they get to have and keep their own fixed wing combat aviation elements, something the Army would dearly like to have but does not.

Yet again, you need to do more research and think harder. This stuff isn't nearly as simple as you seem to wish it to be...

It ain't so simpl? Well, golllleee. I thote sure it were. Durn. I tri to think good bute it harder than it were yesturdei. I try over agin.

The Marenes have diffarunt trainings and supperts and theer contraptiuns and guns be diffarunt then ourn Army but I saw in Life magazeen once whur the guns and trainings and such was diffarunt in the Redcote army but they was caled an army. Them Frenchies was all differunt in their army thun ourn army but it wer an army 2. I giss I jist doan get why. I membur 2 onct in skool they say that ther laws can be changin just bye some of the fellers in Warshintun takin a vote on 'er. I thing that kool ting. Laws can bee changeded in these US states. Nother ting I member abote ourn army and ourn guys who fly the reallly speedy planes. Some feller told me ourn army used 2 have all those speedy planes but they was snookereded by the pilots. He said pilots was sneaky. He said to the Mareenes were even sneakier than them pilots and the Mareenes got to keep ther speedy planes.

I tries 2 figure it rite but so hards it b.

I knowed a guy named Norm onct. Do you tink he b kin to International norms?

[Ken White]

I knowed a guy named Norm onct. Do you tink he b kin to International norms?

Probably not.