As Defense Secretary Leon Panetta prepares his recommendations for Pentagon budget cuts, he is likely to reduce the military's resources for future, large-scale counterinsurgency operations of the sort that were ballyhooed just a few years ago in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The boom in "COIN," as these operations are known, has proved to be something of a bubble. Budget pressures have curbed the appetite for the ambitious, "protect-the-population" missions that were promoted with such enthusiasm by Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Stanley McChrystal. The focus increasingly is on raids by the tighter, more kinetic Special Operations Forces, which are seen as the big success story of these wars, to the extent success can be claimed.
"It's not going to be likely that we will deploy 150,000 troops to an area the way we did in Afghanistan and Iraq," said one top Pentagon official, explaining the rationale for Panetta's budget review.
Panetta has been signaling for several months that the Army and Marines, which have carried the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, will be cut in his 2013 budget. His final recommendations won't be finished until year-end, but the Army and the Marines are already planning force reductions, recognizing that new and prolonged large-scale counterinsurgency missions aren't likely anytime soon.
Unless, of course, you count the likelihood of such actions in CONUS. If you look at what is likely coming down the road at us, you would have the entire military, cooks, bakers and logisticians thrown in, training for riot control and deliver-the-MRE operations.
6 comments:
shhhh...
Don't give em any ideas : )
Mozart
CONUS operations were what the Stryker was originally purchsed for, during the Clinton years.
That they didn't fair well in Afghan terrain, and the use of HEAT rounds from advanced RPGs, won't matter to a government that thinks the population has nothing with which to resist armored, wheeled vehicles.
Little do they know.
Mebbyso, but it occurs to this paranoid old man that one reason His Most Divine Majesty Barak the First has such a hard on to get all our troops out of the rockpile and the sandbox is to have them available IN CONUS to protect HIS statist ass.
Also, I am starting to doubt that a mere world-wide depression may not be enough motivation for the elites to take the actions necessary to touch off a societal breakdown and true civil war. It might only be enough to accelerate the slide towards a gray, soviet-style society here. And I'm not sure that such a development will happen quickly enough to make the frog jump out of the kettle before it's rendered into soup.
Sooo . . .
The big brass hats at the Pentagon want to turn all the regular GI's (grunts, pogues & REMFs) into super SF/Marines?
Good luck fighting the next "war" (wherever it may be) with a VERY attenuated fighting force.
B Woodman
III-per
Folks,
Don't underestimate the opposition while doing a chest-beating dance.
WE will have ourselves: outgunned; outmanned; vilified/demonized, scattered about the country; few technological resources; virtually no intelligence apparatus; most likely no foreign support (unlike the Founding Fathers).
THEY will have: massive firepower at all levels; control of the propaganda machine (aka MSM); much greater manpower; support/assistance of the majority of the population; an established and superior intelligence community; well-trained, well-funded, motivated and seasoned troops with combat experience in various theaters of war; massive reserves of manpower in the form of the security forces (FBI, DEA, DHS, state/county/local law enforcement); communications capabilities that include space satellites.
This is a fight we cannot win as the facts stand.
However, a secessionist/separatist movement, concentrated in one or two states, might (MIGHT) succeed where a scattered guerrilla force might not.
Such a movement has several advantages:
(1) It concentrates the FREEFOR within geographic regions where FREEFOR would be embedded among friendly natives, reducing the percentage of the population willing to betray you (concentration is a risk, however);
(2) It places the FEDGOV in an untenable position -- it won't use its most powerful weapons against you if such entails revealing its true face to domestic and international audiences -- the FEDGOV must maintain the fiction that it is one of the "good guys" to keep the loyalty of the masses. A separatist movement might thus leverage "international opinion", as the Palestinians and Bosnians did, in our favor by manipulating the narrative -- you can move from being a "terrorist" to being a "dissident" or a "militant" in such a way.
(3) It nullifies the motivational advantage for the OPFOR -- by securing a geographical base, with a political-military framework that claims constitutional legitimacy, it might plant the seed of doubt among the OPFOR as to who exactly truly serves the Constitution. In such a fight, PSYOPS will be crucial for de-motivating OPFOR and even (maybe) securing defectors.
(4) A separatist movement has the high moral ground and can leverage it for recruitment -- the purpose is not to "overthrow the government", but rather to "re-constitute the vision of the Founders". In the eyes of the world, YOU are not initiating battle, the FEDGOV will have to. By seceding, FREEFOR withdraws its obedience and FEDGOV must either attack or cede the ground. The first serves to alienate part of the population, while the latter undermines the legitimacy of the FEDGOV.
A separatist/secessionist movement serves as the political framework within within the military options are exercised. Politics with no military option only lends legitimacy to the current system; exercising the military option without a coherent political strategy devolves into terrorism, and can be easily isolated and crushed.
Anonymous at 8:13 AM: I hope your ideas spark more discussion. This really needs more exposure.
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