Quote Originally Posted by slapout9 View Post
IMO The larger problem since we entered the nuclear age at the end of ww2 is that no one talks about the fact that strategy and policy have merged into a new and distinct entity! The world was changed forever that day, but our thinking and our framework concepts have not. So in the end our judgement is flawed......And we fail.

Just look at the nuclear proliferation that is all around us but we spend unbelievable amounts on so called counter terrorism. One of the primary directives of the Constitution is to preserve a "Future" for our next generation, that flat out requires some type of plan! Where is it? We have lost our since of priorities,which in someway is a key component to any future plan.
We all tend to have negative views of the world based on the "if it bleeds, it leads" media news standard; however, I think we would be hard pressed to make a case that the U.S. has not relatively consistently improved the standard of living for its citizens since the end of WWII. There will of course be cyclic ups and downs in the economy, but the overall trend remains positive. Whether by plan or by chance we seem to be something right despite the bitter divides in our political system.

Critical to sustained improved standard of living for the next generation is revamping our education system, fixing the infrastructure that our economy is dependent upon, and forcing the extreme right and left elements in our political structure out of the system, so the real politicians can work on solving problems through the age old and tested compromising process that is the foundation of a democratic system.

The one issue we concern ourselves most with on SWJ is national security. I'm eager to see the final National Security Strategy, and the subordinate strategies developed to implement it. The new administration has hit the refresh button, but I do have concerns that it may be excessively focused on preparing to go to war with near peer state actors at the expense of other threats we face now and will face in the 21st Century.

You pointed out one, the proliferation of WMD. The proliferation of WMD probably can't be stopped any more than the illegal drug trade, but it can disrupted, degraded, delayed, or pick your other D word. The insurmountable problems are the expanding black, gray, and white globalized markets where the components of WMD systems can be purchased, and the inability to prevent WMD knowledge proliferation via the internet. Assuming I'm right, where does that leave us? On one hand, if we modernize our nuclear force, we can probably deter so called rational state actors from using WMD, just as they can deter us. On the other hand, it is unlikely that suicidal jihadist organizations can be deterred from using WMD, which will most likely be the use of chemical weapons in the near term. How do we adapt to manage that challenge?

Moving back to the threat of state actors challenging our interests globally. This threat undermines both our economic and security interests, but they are doing this now in the gray zone, so are we addressing the gray zone gap? While we certainly need a military that can prevail in a high end conflict in case we stumble into one, does it make any difference if we have a compelling conventional and nuclear military advantage if our adversaries are still achieving war like objectives short of war, and we have no idea of how to counter it? Are we hamstrung by outdated concepts and laws that do not hinder our adversaries? Do we have the wherewithal to change, or will we slowly retreat?

Back to your original point, we won't preserve a future for the next generation with outdated ideas and concepts. We have to adapt or strategy to deal with the world we have, not the one we want. We seem to want a world where a large conventional force can ward off the evils that threaten us. I for one, think that is an outdated idea that has already been proven to have no legs. It is one leg of a three legged stool at best.

You also point out the disconnect between policy and strategy, an argument I partly follow, but hope you can expand upon it a little to clarify. Another issue is we live in a world of programs and programming, and programs are what the services compete for, not war winning strategies. How do we fix this legacy mindset?

The good news is we're, at least in theory, an open society that is willing to identify, expose, and then fix our problems. That is a competitive advantage that is hard to beat when we come together as a nation to meet the challenge of the day. Hopefully we can do so before the next Pearl Harbor or 9/11 attack.