Listen Up Marines, We Belong at Sea

[Bob's World]

If partners feel they need additional capacity, they are fully capable of developing the amount and type they need.

This idea that we will train others to go out and do our fighting for us smacks a bit too much of several failed empires who have gone before us. The reality is that if we stop trying to exert so much control over situations that have so little impact upon our our truly vital interests, we will find that we have excess capacity in spades.

As to your proposed numbers for the Army and Marines, it is well to remember that these are two very different organizations with very different missions. Just because we often use them in the same manner does not make them the same. They have unique constitutional foundations, and the Marines have a much more active peacetime engagement role than the Army does. Marines exist to conduct short duration expeditions as needed; while Armies exist to fight long duration wars. Why would we keep 4 times the warfighting force in times of peace?? Better to sustain more Marines and accept the risk of cutting more Army. We need to be smart, not fair.

Start point to getting to smart solutions is to take on the strategic questions first. We need a new foundation of thought for how we view the world and our role in it. Then we need to design institutions, policies and forces to implement the same. This is what we did to implement containment, and now it is long past time to go through that same degree of overhaul yet again.

[Bill Moore]

Bob,

I agree we have collectively over stated the demand signal for "build partner capacity", and I believe we are fooling ourselves if we honestly think we can outsource our fighting. To some extent we can, but we can use IMET, and small footprint training elements on the ground to help partners develop specific capabilities and capacities. We don't need capacity building BDE's in my opinion unless we foresee more OEF-As and OIFs.

If partners feel they need additional capacity, they are fully capable of developing the amount and type they need.

You know that this statement is not true in many cases.

This idea that we will train others to go out and do our fighting for us smacks a bit too much of several failed empires who have gone before us. The reality is that if we stop trying to exert so much control over situations that have so little impact upon our our truly vital interests, we will find that we have excess capacity in spades.

This is valid and deserves further discussion. More thoughts later, household six is issuing orders, I have run :-).

[gute]

This is valid and deserves further discussion. More thoughts later, household six is issuing orders, I have run :-).

Now, that's funny. I refer to my better half as Gunny - she sounds like one at times. Course, she is married to a full grown kid.

IMO this is gonna be settled by economic disaster in this country.

[gute]

You guys may have read this before:

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/jou...eoptolemus.pdf

[Bob's World]

Bill,

Note, I said "need," not want. Granted some of them need to add a good dose of not aggravating the insurgent tendencies of their own populaces quite so much in order to bring the problem down within the capacity they are able to produce.

But as we both well know, the primary purpose of our historic capacity building engagement was far more about building relationships than skills, and about developing and sustaining our own understanding of critical places. Building professionalism has also been important in reducing that afore mentioned aggravation...