Combat Power, Conflict Resolution, and US Economy

[Dayuhan]

Read the document.

I did. I see nothing providing real support to the assertion of unprecedented danger.

I'm not sure anyone's speeches, and in particular speeches made by those representing institutions whose budget allocations depend on the perceptions of danger, are a good place to start assessing levels of threat.

This is not necessarily true. How many soldiers, aircraft, and ships has the US used in combating Al-Qaeda and the Taliban? There are X amount of soldiers on the ground, Y amount of aircraft providing tactical, logistical, intelligence, etc support, and Z amount of ships moving to and fro (at times with escort) moving supplies, combat aircraft, etc. Then there are overhead assets that enable communication, etc, with their operators also. Whether or not all of this is necessary for defeating a terrorist group (with or without WMD) is besides the point; it can and is being used for that purpose. Your objection is one of military effectiveness, which will be looked at when I investigate conflict resolution.

To what extent are these assets being used top combat AQ - the terrorist group in the picture - and to what extent are they being used to try to establish a government in Afghanistan that will be acceptable to the US? These are two entirely different goals.

If we assume that in order to avert these "unprecedented dangers" we need to run around deposing governments and installing new ones, then we might be pardoned for assuming that large expensive conventional forces are needed for the task. Those assumptions seems to me highly questionable. Again, the key to achieving goals is not only the amount of force you can apply, but the goals you select and the means you choose to try to achieve them. If we can't succeed in transforming Afghanistan into a Western-style liberal democracy it won't be because we couldn't apply enough force, it will be because we selected a goal we can't achieve and tried to pursue it by inappropriate means. If your hammer won't drive a screw, you don't need a bigger hammer.

The question remains: what exactly are the threats that produce these "unprecedented dangers", and what exactly is needed to combat these threats? If we're talking about the threat of non-state actors, transnational criminals, terror groups, etc, I see no rational point in assessing our capacity by the number of ships and aircraft we can deploy. The number of F-35s or F-22s or carriers we buy may be proportional to our economic means, but I'm not convinced that it has any great impact on our capacity to counter these threats.

Military spending in general is not only related to GDP and government revenue, but also to perceived levels of threat and the nature of perceived threats. If we're at war or faced with imminent threat, we're willing to spend a higher percentage of GDP on the military. If the perceived threat appears to be from conventional force, we'll be willing to spend more on conventional force. The threat of WMD-armed terrorists makes a poor justification for spending more on F-22s, for obvious reasons.