Leviathan's speed versus SysAdmin's thoroughness: the budget debate begins

■"Rumsfeld's Push For Speed Fuels Pentagon Dissent: Billions Are Sought for Force To Fight Blitzkrieg War; Critics Cite Iraq Troubles (Who Will Repair the Sewers?)," by Greg Jaffe, Wall Street Journal, 16 May 2005, p. A1.

Great article by always good Jaffe on Rumsfeld's push for speed-speed-speed as the essence of the transformed Leviathan. I agree with Rummy's approach on two levels: tactical speed is an obvious good, because it keeps our people alive in combat. So buy fast platforms (aircraft, ships, vehicles) so our people can move around as rapidly as possible. Operational speed is also key, but there we're into the realm of net-centric warfare more than kinetics or movement of stuff, so it's bytes over bullets.

Where I part with Rumsfeld and side with the recalcitrant Marines and Army is on strategic speed, or this 10-30-30 notion of stopping a military advance in 10 days, then defeating the enemy in another 30 days, and then being ready to do it all over in another 30 days. Simply put, the U.S. has never engaged foes with that sort of rapidity, and there's no clear evidence that we'll ever need or want to react that fast. Because if we're reacting that fast, we're reacting alone, and the Leviathan needs more justification than just Washington's firm decision to act. Without lining up the process that marries the SysAdmin follow-on force to the Leviathan's power application, we get Iraq after Iraq: easy first-half victories followed by slogging second-half efforts where casualties pile up, allies peel away, and we end up looking more imperial than sysadmin in our bodyguarding of globalization's advance.

The Army and the Marines are right: there needs to be budgetary balancing here, and to the extent a bias is revealed with time, it should accrue funds to the labor-intensive SysAdmin force, not the capital-intensive Leviathan, which has no peers on its horizon-all fantasies about China pushed aside by a cooler, more logical, and more utilitarian assessment of globalization and the international security environment it spawns.

The 10-30-30 looks like the Air Force and Navy trying to hog transformation over the long run, claiming the bulk of the budgetary pie, when in reality the Iraq occupation proves that transformation must shift from the air to the ground if we're going to become serious about shrinking the Gap and winning this Global War on Terrorism.