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| The aftermath of a US drone attack on a Pakistani village. (photo: Ijaz Muhammad/AP) |
06 February 12
ake no mistake: we're entering a new world of military planning. Admittedly, the latest proposed Pentagon budget manages
to preserve just about every costly toy-cum-boondoggle from the good
old days when MiGs still roamed the skies, including an uncut nuclear arsenal.
Eternally over-budget items like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter,
cherished by their services and well-lobbied congressional
representatives, aren't leaving the scene any time soon, though delays or cuts
in purchase orders are planned. All this should reassure us that,
despite the talk of massive cuts, the U.S. military will continue to be
the profligate, inefficient, and remarkably ineffective institution we've come to know and squander our treasure on.
Still, the cuts that matter are already in the works,
the ones that will change the American way of war. They may mean little
in monetary terms - the Pentagon budget is actually slated to increase through 2017
- but in imperial terms they will make a difference. A new way of
preserving the embattled idea of an American planet is coming into focus
and one thing is clear: in the name of Washington's needs, it will
offer a direct challenge to national sovereignty.
Heading Offshore
The Marines began huge amphibious exercises - dubbed
Bold Alligator 2012 - off the East coast of the U.S. last week, but
someone should IM them: it won't help. No matter what they do, they are
going to have less boots on the ground in the future, and there's going to be less ground to have them on. The same is true for the Army (even if a cut of 100,000 troops will still leave the combined forces of the two services larger
than they were on September 11, 2001). Less troops, less full-frontal
missions, no full-scale invasions, no more counterinsurgency: that's the
order of the day. Just this week, in fact, Secretary of Defense Leon
Panetta suggested that the schedule for the drawdown of combat boots in Afghanistan might be speeded up by more than a year. Consider it a sign of the times.
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