Alireza Nader. RAND, 23 February 2012.
http://defensealt.org/zXmokM

Excerpt:

Khamenei is not an irrational actor… His possible intent in developing a nuclear weapons capability almost certainly is not to destroy Israel, but rather to guard against a foreign attack or counter an internal challenge.

Now that speculation and discussion of a possible attack from Israel on Iranian nuclear development facilities is rampant, it is time to bring back a review I did on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq:

First Strike Guidelines: The Case of Iraq
Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo #25
by Charles Knight, 16 September 2002 (revised and updated 10 March 2003)
http://www.comw.org/pda/0209schneider.html

Excerpt:

…despite the repeated use of the term “preemption” to describe their counterproliferation strategy (see the 2002 National Security Strategy), the Bush administration’s strategic approach to Iraq is one of preventive war. The U.S. Department of Defense defines preventive war as “war initiated in the belief that military conflict, while not imminent, is inevitable, and that to delay would involve greater risk” while it defines preemptive attack as “an attack initiated on the basis of incontrovertible evidence that an enemy attack is imminent.” Preventive war has long been understood to be highly destabilizing and it is nearly impossible to reconcile it with the notions of non-aggression imbedded in the United Nations Charter.

Michael E. O’Hanlon and Bruce Riedel. Brookings Institute, 15 February 2012.
http://defensealt.org/A1HHL6

Excerpt:

The next president will need to move closer to a policy of containing Pakistani aggression, which would mean a more hostile relationship. But, it should be a focused hostility, aimed not at hurting Pakistan’s people but rather at holding its army and intelligence branches accountable.

Editor’s Comment:
I suppose we should give the authors credit for their display of imagination. I, for one, can’t imagine this strategy working. It also raises the question in my mind as to who would be doing the “aggression”, Pakistan or the U.S.?

Craig Whitlock. Washington Post, 15 February 2012.
http://defensealt.org/x07ZPf

Excerpt:

As the Obama administration reorients its military strategy toward Asia and the vital maritime trade routes in the Pacific, the bulk of the responsibility will fall on the Navy, which was largely sidelined during the land wars of the last decade.

But the Navy will have to perform its mission in Asia with fewer ships in coming years than it had anticipated. Under President Obama’s proposed defense budget, the Navy will retire nine ships early and cut or delay the purchases of 16 others over the next five years.

Editor’s Comment:
While I suspect that it is likely that “the Navy will have to perform its mission in Asia with fewer ships in coming years” due to continuing budget pressure on ship building, the Chief of Naval Operations presently insists that the Navy will have at least as many combat ships as it has now (286) and will continue to grow toward its goal of having well over 300 ships. In any case, the new strategic guidance suggests the Pacific Fleet will have priority for assignment of ships. It seems more likely that the Atlantic Fleet will take the hit.

Josh Rogin. Foreign Policy, 15 February 2012.
http://defensealt.org/zJViH0

Excerpt:

The Pentagon’s new budget request moves $3 billion of military pay and benefits out of the base budget into the war budget in an accounting maneuver experts and congressional staffers say is meant to get around legally mandated budget caps…

Project on Defense Alternatives, 13 February 2012.

Comparing the President’s requested budget authority for the Pentagon “base budget” in two successive budgets (FY-2012 and FY-2013) shows a reduction of nearly $490 billion in the years of comparison 2012-2021. This is a subtraction from last year’s plan and not from the CBO baseline, however.

• 2012-2021 cumulative spending in FY-2012 plan = $6.14 trillion
• 2012-2021 cumulative spending in FY-2013 plan = $5.65 trillion

There are other ways to measure progress in bringing fiscal responsibility to defense budgeting:

– Taking the 2012 spending level and holding it steady over the period 2012-2021 with increases for inflation only would produce a cumulative total of $5.82 trillion.

– Taking the 2011 spending level and holding it steady with increases for inflation would produce for 2012-2021 a cumulative spending total of $5.9 trillion.

Either of these might be used as alternative yardsticks for measuring the administration’s austerity efforts in the defense field — and both suggest a more modest rollback: $170 billion over ten years and $250 billion, respectively.

Project on Defense Alternatives, 13 February 2012. Measured against recent spending levels, the new ten-year plan for Defense base budget spending shows only modest savings. One table. http://defensealt.org/GXMlQO

Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), February 2012.
http://defensealt.org/ymU504

U.S. Air Force. February 2012.
http://defensealt.org/HA4Mbm

Rachel Gerber. Policy Memo, The Stanley Foundation, 1 February 2012.
http://defensealt.org/AymAmo

Excerpt:

On January 18, 2012, the Stanley Foundation, in partnership with the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the MacArthur Foundation, convened figures critical to the historical and contemporary evolution of the Responsibility to Protect to assess the current state of the principle and consider the evolving global dynamics that will frame, drive, and challenge policy development in the years ahead.

Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis. Armed Forces Journal, February 2012.
http://defensealt.org/zjV1gq

Excerpt:

I first encountered senior-level equivocation during a 1997 division-level “experiment” that turned out to be far more setpiece than experiment. Over dinner at Fort Hood, Texas, Training and Doctrine Command leaders told me that the Advanced Warfighter Experiment (AWE) had shown that a “digital division” with fewer troops and more gear could be far more effective than current divisions. The next day, our congressional staff delegation observed the demonstration firsthand, and it didn’t take long to realize there was little substance to the claims. Virtually no legitimate experimentation was actually conducted. All parameters were carefully scripted. All events had a preordained sequence and outcome. The AWE was simply an expensive show, couched in the language of scientific experimentation and presented in glowing press releases and public statements, intended to persuade Congress to fund the Army’s preference.

…when having to decide whether to continue a war, alter its aims or to close off a campaign that cannot be won at an acceptable price, our senior leaders have an obligation to tell Congress and American people the unvarnished truth and let the people decide what course of action to choose. That is the very essence of civilian control of the military. The American people deserve better than what they’ve gotten from their senior uniformed leaders over the last number of years. Simply telling the truth would be a good start.

Paul Chapin and George Petrolekas. CDA Institute, February 2012.
http://defensealt.org/xSKPtu

Anthony H. Cordesman with Bradley Bosserman. Center for Strategic & International Studies, 30 January 2012.
http://defensealt.org/xpBqhn

Excerpt:

The US must fundamentally rethink its approach to “optional wars.” It is far from clear that it can win the Iraq War, rather than empower Iran, without a strong military and aid presence. It will decisively lose the Afghan and Pakistan conflict if it does not quickly develop plans for a military and diplomatic presence, and help to aid Afghanistan in transitioning away from dependence on foreign military and economic spending during 2012-2020. US troop cuts are not a transition plan, and focusing on withdrawal is a recipe for defeat.

That said, the US cannot, and should not, repeat the mistake it made in intervening in Iraq and Afghanistan. It must deal with nontraditional threats with a far better and more affordable mix of global, regional, and national strategies that can deal with issues like the turmoil in the Middle East, and South and Central Asia, and terrorism and instability on a global basis. It must rely on aiding friendly states, deterrence, containment, and far more limited and less costly forms of intervention.

Daniel L Davis. Rolling Stone, 27 January, 2012.
http://defensealt.org/HsCR0D

Excerpt:

In my honest and very frank estimation, American Service Members are dead today – and hundreds more have had limbs blown off – as payment for the perpetuation of this myth, for we built the 2010 surge in Afghanistan on the belief that the same “fundamentals that served us so well in Iraq” could be adjusted to fit the new effort. As has now been made very clear from the foregoing, however, the “protect the population” strategy used in 2007 Iraq was never the primary causal factor leading to success as has been claimed. Instead, it was an event entirely beyond our ability to influence or control: America’s main international terrorist enemy al-Qaeda became such a heinous animal that the brutality they inflicted on our local enemy (the Iraqi national insurgency) caused the latter to turn against what ought to have been their natural ally.

By burying that truth and instead elevating the myth to the status of doctrine, we have set the conditions for our own harm in Afghanistan.

from the Project on Defense Alternatives, 26 January 2012

The future-years Pentagon base budget plan released by Secretary Panetta on 26 January 2012 foresees rolling spending back to the level of 2008, corrected for inflation.  Spending on the non-war part of the budget during the next five years (2013-2017) will be about 4% lower than during the past five (2008-2012) in real terms.  The real (that is, “inflation corrected”) change from 2012 will be a reduction of 3.2%

The chart below corrects for inflation by rendering all sums in 2012 dollars.  It shows that base-budget spending had jumped 55% after inflation between 1998 and 2010.  The new budget plan sets 2013 spending at $525 billion, which is 46% above the 1998 level.

The new budget plan – represented by the green trend line — stands in stark contrast to the reductions mandated by the Budget Control Act under the provisions for sequestration (represented by the red trend line).  Sequestration would roll Pentagon base-budget spending back to the level of 2004, which would still be 31% above the 1998 level (corrected for inflation).  The new budget plan and sequestration do have one thing in common: both would keep Pentagon spending above the inflation-adjusted average for the Cold War years (represented by the horizontal dash line).

Christopher Preble and Charles Knight. Huffington Post, 20 January 2012.
http://defensealt.org/ysCbHQ

Excerpt:

Balance depends on what you are standing on. With respect to our physical security, the United States is blessed with continental peace and a dearth of powerful enemies. Our military is the best-trained, best-led, and best-equipped in the world. It is our unstable finances and our sluggish economy that make us vulnerable to stumbling.

Unfortunately, the new strategy does not fully appreciate our strengths, nor does it fully address our weaknesses. In the end, it does not achieve Eisenhower’s vaunted balance.

__________________________________________________

Nathaniel H. Sledge Jr. National Defense, 20 January 2012.
http://defensealt.org/H8o8I8

Excerpt:

When crises fade and wars end, the services, ever focused on the resource war, fight to ensure the inevitable budget reductions are minimized to preserve readiness and modernization accounts, or whatever is the highest priority at the time. The drums of outrage and indignation beat loudly as each service warns of catastrophe if their budgets are reduced too much or at all. The services eventually shed people, infrastructure, systems, and capabilities they do not deem critical to their futures. What is left is, to a large extent, what is already in their plans, and what is in their plans is whatever is critical to their identities and helps them win the resource war.

Matthew Rosenberg. New York Times, 20 January 2012.
http://pulse.me/s/5a33j

Excerpt:

American and other coalition forces here are being killed in increasing numbers by the very Afghan soldiers they fight alongside and train, in attacks motivated by deep-seated animosity between the supposedly allied forces, according to American and Afghan officers and a classified coalition report.

Editor’s Comment:

Seems like very strong evidence that U.S. forces have overstayed their welcome!