Antiwar.com Blog

Frederick W. Kagan, author, and teacher of military history at West Point, is a tax-and-spend hegemonist. In “The art of war,” an article from the November, 2003, The New Criterion, which I found on the excellent aldaily.com site, Kagan warns about the dangers of the “search for ‘efficiency’ in military affairs.” Rather than an efficient military, see, the US needs a massive military with intentional redundancy in equipment and functions. Or is he arguing that military defense is possible and inexpensive but world hegemony is expensive in blood and treasure — and futile to boot?

Excerpts:

In each of the periods in recent history in which one might see a fundamental change in the nature of war, it is true that normally one state begins with a dramatic lead. Revolutionary France’s ability in the 1790s to mobilize vast conscript armies and to sustain that mobilization for years gave her an important advantage over continental states unable to match such levels of mobilization. Prussia’s early and enthusiastic development of a dense railroad net and of the general staff structure needed to plan for and control a railroad mobilization led directly to her crushing victories over Austria in 1866 and over France in 1871. The Nazis’ creation of a technologically advanced and highly trained armored force, along with a significantly better armored warfare doctrine, led directly to the destruction of the Franco-British army in 1940.

In each case, however, we must also consider the sequel. Napoleonic France, Imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all ultimately lost subsequent wars and were destroyed. The reasons for those failures are enlightening about the limitations of the current definition of revolution in military affairs. …

History so far, therefore, has been very clear that “asymmetrical advantages” gained by one state do not normally last very long. Technology and technique inevitably spreads. Other states acquire either similar or counteracting capabilities. The final victors of each new “revolutionary” epoch have not usually been the states that initiated the revolution, but those that responded best once the technologies and techniques had become common property.

It also shows that the initial successes those “revolutionary” states achieved have tended to breed arrogance and overconfidence, hindering their ability to respond as other states began to match their capabilities. Napoleonic France, Imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all ossified in their techniques after the initial victories, and lost to enemies who, forced by defeat, built on their own advances more successfully.

The search for an indefinite American “asymmetrical advantage,” therefore, requires not merely a revolution in military affairs: it also requires a fundamental revolution in human affairs of a sort never seen before. It requires that America continue to change her armed forces so rapidly and successfully that no other state can ever catch up—indeed, that no other state in the world even try.

…[F]ew if any of America’s enemies will have the vast resource-stretching responsibilities that America has. They will be concerned only with their own region of the world and will focus their efforts on developing communications and target tracking systems only over a small portion of the globe. They will not need a dense global satellite constellation or the ability to project power over thousands of miles. The costs to them of developing systems comparable to America’s, but only in a restricted geographic area, will accordingly be much smaller than the price the U.S. has had to pay to achieve that capability everywhere.

Then, too, other states can reap the benefits of modern communications systems without bearing the expensive burden of basic scientific research and development. Microprocessors, satellites, encrypted laser communications systems, cell phone systems, and the whole host of technologies that form the basis of American military superiority are now the property of the world. It will not cost America’s enemies anything like what it cost the U.S. to develop its capabilities, either in money or in time. Since technology inevitably becomes less expensive as it proliferates and as time goes on, moreover, the situation for America’s would-be adversaries will only improve in this regard. …

When America’s enemies have developed the technology and trained the people who will use it, they will also have to develop the doctrines and techniques to make it effective. In this regard, they have the most significant advantage of all. Much of America’s tested doctrine has been published, much can be deduced from the CNN coverage of America’s most recent wars. Once again, America’s enemies can start from the position of proven success that the U.S. armed forces achieved, and build from there.

Their real advantage in this area, however, results from the fact that they will be developing armed forces specifically designed to fight an enemy with the same capabilities. America’s military has not done so. American military doctrine continues to foresee fighting enemies lacking any significant capacity to deploy precision guided munitions, without dense satellite constellations and communications systems, and without the ability to strike targets precisely at great distances. It is one of the more troubling lessons of the history of new military technology that the states that pioneer the new technologies and techniques generally fail to adapt successfully to the situation in which all major states have the same technologies and techniques. It remains to be seen whether America will do any better than her predecessors in this regard.

If you haven’t read Nick Turse’s follow-up to the Toledo Blade‘s recent series on Vietnam atrocities, please do. And because I’m feeling especially dyspeptic today, I ask you to please forward Nick’s article to every gung ho jingo in your address book.

We know that conscription is slavery and empire is slavery but what is slavery?

“The Tale of the Slave” from Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 290-292.

Consider the following sequence of cases, which we shall call the Tale of the Slave, and imagine it is about you.

1. There is a slave completely at the mercy of his brutal master’s whims. He often is cruelly beaten, called out in the middle of the night, and so on.

2. The master is kindlier and beats the slave only for stated infractions of his rules (not fulfilling the work quota, and so on). He gives the slave some free time.

3. The master has a group of slaves, and he decides how things are to be allocated among them on nice grounds, taking into account their needs, merit, and so on.

4. The master allows his slaves four days on their own and requires them to work only three days a week on his land. The rest of the time is their own.

5. The master allows his slaves to go off and work in the city (or anywhere they wish) for wages. He requires only that they send back to him three-sevenths of their wages. He also retains the power to recall them to the plantation if some emergency threatens his land; and to raise or lower the three-sevenths amount required to be turned over to him. He further retains the right to restrict the slaves from participating in certain dangerous activities that threaten his financial return, for example, mountain climbing, cigarette smoking.

6. The master allows all of his 10,000 slaves, except you, to vote, and the joint decision is made by all of them. There is open discussion, and so forth, among them, and they have the power to determine to what uses to put whatever percentage of your (and their) earnings they decide to take; what activities legitimately may be forbidden to you, and so on.

Let us pause in this sequence of cases to take stock. If the master contracts this transfer of power so that he cannot withdraw it, you have a change of master. You now have 10,000 masters instead of just one; rather you have one 10,000-headed master. Perhaps the 10,000 even will be kindlier than the benevolent master in case 2. Still, they are your master. However, still more can be done. A kindly single master (as in case 2) might allow his slave(s) to speak up and try to persuade him to make a certain decision. The 10,000-headed monster can do this also.

7. Though still not having the vote, you are at liberty (and are given the right) to enter into the discussions of the 10,000, to try to persuade them to adopt various policies and to treat you and themselves in a certain way. They then go off to vote to decide upon policies covering the vast range of their powers.

8. In appreciation of your useful contributions to discussion, the 10,000 allow you to vote if they are deadlocked; they commit themselves to this procedure. After the discussion you mark your vote on a slip of paper, and they go off and vote. In the eventuality that they divide evenly on some issue, 5,000 for and 5,000 against, they look at your ballot and count it in. This has never yet happened; they have never yet had occasion to open your ballot. (A single master also might commit himself to letting his slave decide any issue concerning him about which he, the master, was absolutely indifferent.)

9. They throw your vote in with theirs. If they are exactly tied your vote carries the issue. Otherwise it makes no difference to the electoral outcome.

The question is: which transition from case 1 to case 9 made it no longer the tale of a slave.

*SO SUE HIM: Julian Sanchez gives everyone’s favorite law professor a swift kick in the shorts.

*SUPPORT OUR TROOPS: The patriots at Free Republic show veterans some mad love.

*UH, MR. PRESIDENT: “Is Bulgaria still part of the coalition, and, if so, what have they done for us lately?” Calvin Trillin imagines a press conference worth watching. (Props to Krokul River.)

*APOCALYPSE NOW vs. M*A*S*H: Korean War vet fights Vietnam vets at Veteran’s Day parade. No civilians were injured.

*GOY HOWDY: Junior neocon Ben Shapiro outs Al Franken: “The great Jewish poster boy intermarried 25 years ago, although his non-Jewish, non-Jewish educated children ‘think of themselves as Jewish.’ He was never bar-mitzvahed and attended Jewish ‘Saturday school’ for approximately two years — he ‘hated’ it. He doesn’t believe in the veracity of the Bible or in Israeli settlements, which he describes as ‘religious fundamentalism.'” Expect David Frum to be outraged by this crude anti-Semitism–on Franken’s part, of course.

This essay by Ted Rall has sent Instaredundant and his posse into a holy furor. “Rall supports the Iraqi insurgents!” shrieks the blob.

Come on, guys, that’s simple-minded even for you. But let’s grant that Rall is, in Reynolds’ words (actually, he probably took them from someone else), a “loathsome human being.” Fine. Now address the message itself, and tell me that this is not exactly what the insurgents believe and say to potential recruits. If this is their reasoning–and it pretty clearly is–then what the hell sort of victory can we expect in Iraq? Reynolds’ circle of jerks hates Ted Rall for the same reason the government hates Nathaniel Heatwole– he has kicked over their theoretical fortress of toothpicks.

From Wednesday’s Today show:

Couric: “You say you’re not a hero…”
Lynch: “No.”
Couric: “…you’re a survivor.”
Lynch: “Exactly.”
Couric: “But, Rick, you think Jessica Lynch is a hero.”
Bragg: “Yeah, we’ve argued about this, too, a lot. But, you know, I’ve said this before, I think that every soldier there, every sergeant with two children at home, every soldier like Lori Piestewa who have the guts to crawl into the cab of a truck and go into a war while the rest of us sit at home watching it on the news, I think they’re heroes. I think they have to be. And I don’t — obviously, there are soldiers who were the dramatic hero, though, the ones who attack mortar positions and more of what we think of as the pure American hero, but I think it takes a certain amount of heroism to just go.
Couric: “And survive.”
Bragg: “Yeah.”

Note that when Lynch uses the term “survivor,” she’s downplaying her own accomplishment, which, let’s be frank, amounts to respiring, albeit under harrowing circumstances. Lynch thus showed herself to be far more morally astute than Couric or Bragg.