This week's column (#112)

Next president to find limited military options

Recent diplomatic efforts by the White House with both North Korea and Iran -- nuclear newbies and remaining members of the "axis of evil" -- strike many as the Bush administration's desperate grab for legacy. But I see a different strategic reality emerging, one that will steer the next president's course whether he likes it or not.

Due to Afghanistan and Iraq, our military is essentially tied-down on a near global basis. That means America cannot place large numbers of boots on the ground anywhere right now, and to do so with any speed would be monumentally difficult.

Read on at KnoxNews.
Read on at Scripps Howard.

Comments

[Bill C.]

Sounds a lot like after Vietnam (Vietnam Syndrome/Powell Doctrine); wherein, 1975 - 1991, relative power of the United States grows steadily; important alliances are repaired and strengthened; great power enemy is defeated through emphasis on "big war" preparations; lesser problems are handled by ingenuity and inventiveness; primary anti-market/anti-modernization ideology whithers away; and globalization, in this more stable environment, does very well.

But today, the context is different.

[Louis Heberlein]

Really?

[Bill C.]

Also like Vietnam, could factors other than military healing time and budgets, more dramatically, limit the new president's options (but improve his focus and foster better performance?)?.These include: (1) Negative American and world opinion re: frontier interventions and (2) a period of significant oil price increases and serious economic difficulties (cir. 1973).

Thus, the very Vietnam-like "perfect storm" of negative factors (isolationist public opinion, ailing economy and worn out military) -- now to be handled in the context of globalization and rising new great powers.

[hof1991]

So the next president needs to be someone who will value the soft kill / connectivity / combined actions and not someone who sees bombing countries as the first option? Hmmm.

[Roque Nuevo]

I don't quibble with the analysis but there's a maybe wider point to be made? Shouldn't we remember that nobody knows the future? That all we can do is to somehow project present tendencies onto some future time? Don't we all realize somehow that if these sorts of predictions came true, then we'd effectively know the future, which we know we don't know?

The point is, the resolution of our mission/adventure/fiasco/debacle in Iraq is bound to change the geopolitical landscape significantly and in ways that are impossible to predict right now. It's at least within the realm of possibility that a more positive resolution in Iraq could happen, in contrast to the negative picture Tom gives us. This would look something like a secure Iraq with a legitimate government (and at least a tactical ally of the US); why wouldn't this add power to the US's already massive supply, thereby making the resolution of other conflicts easier or even preventing them entirely?