Grand Strategy

[SethB]

Ken, a couple more things.

Short wars are certainly great, second only to no war*, but some American wars suffer from incrementalism. They are entered into over time and by degrees. Similarly, it seems to be diffucult to prosecute a war when economy of force is taken to extremes.

As for our allies, I don't have an answer. I'm glad that my thoughts on this matter are of so little consequence. It saves me the burden of deciding what to do with so many billions of dollars and the goodwill of our allies.

*Where applicable.

Also, I was thinking of another conundrum. When we choose to purchase 183 F22s and 200 F35s we may be making too small a purchase. Essentially, those numbers will be split up geographically, and then further split by the fact that not all will be capable of operations at the same time. So in one region there may be only a handful of fighters. The Chinese, according to a professor of mine, have around 5,000 aircraft. While only arounf 20% of them are modern, it would seem conceivable that they could sustain higher losses and still wear our forces down. This is the kind of thinking that the AF Officers in my family use to justify aggressive purchases of 5th generation fighters.