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	<title>U.S. &#187; Chuck Spinney &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>U.S. &#187; Chuck Spinney &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>Repeating Hi$tory</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2013/04/26/military-sos-now-it-stands-for-dame-old-story/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2013/04/26/military-sos-now-it-stands-for-dame-old-story/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:31:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Chuck Spinney</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nation.time.com/?p=118273</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[MARINA DI RAGUSA, Sicily &#8212; Almost 23 years ago, I wrote a short pamphlet, Defense Power Games. My aim then (as it is now) was to explain why the end of the Cold War would not produce a peace dividend in the form of reduced defense budgets that were substantially lower that those averaged during America&#8217;s Cold War with the Soviet Union. Take a quick scan of Defense Power Games&#8230;now watch this 25-minute video &#8211; America&#8217;s War Games &#8211; just released by Al Jazeera for its People and Power segment. The video explains why the end of the War on Terror will not, like the end of the Cold War did not, result in a peace dividend Santayana wrote that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it.  After watching America&#8217;s War Games,  ask yourself two simple questions: 1. &#8220;What has changed since the Defense Power Games pamphlet was published in 1990?&#8221; 2. &#8220;Will the end of the War on Terror produce a dividend?&#8221; I submit the answers are self-evident: (1) &#8220;Nothing&#8221; and (2) &#8220;No&#8221;. But one thing that has changed: our economy is in far greater trouble today than it was in 1990 (although the seeds for the current disaster were being merrily planted during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, as well as in the 1990s, not to mention the first decade of the 21st Century). This time around, it ought to be clear that continuing to assign grossly excessive amounts of scarce resources (capital and skilled labor) to defense spending will make America&#8217;s current economic problems worse. So, how can we reduce the defense budget to free up the funds needed by both the private and public sectors to reinvigorate our economy? Clearly, President Obama&#8217;s most recent budget provides no answer &#8212; he has placed defense off limits.  Moreover, the President and Congress are clearly maneuvering to neuter the effects of the budget sequester on the Pentagon&#8217;s weapons boondoggles by focusing on furloughing people, cutting back on training, reducing spare parts purchases, etc. Over the years (since the 1970s), my colleagues<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=118273&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Military Spending</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/military-spending-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/157278351.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">chuckspinney2</media:title>
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		<title>Assessing Tribal Islam</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2013/04/11/assessing-tribal-islam/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2013/04/11/assessing-tribal-islam/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Apr 2013 12:38:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Chuck Spinney</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nation.time.com/?p=115439</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Bina Shah has written an excellent review of Akbar Ahmed’s important new book, The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam (Brookings, March 2013). I urge you to read it carefully, because I think it accurately sums up much of Ahmed’s tour de force, at least insofar as I understand it. Shah’s review appeared in the 7 April 2013 issue of the Pakistani newspaper Dawn. It stands in sharp contrast to Michael O’Hanlon’s petulant review that appeared in the Brookings own blog, which I also urge you to read carefully.  (I also must note that I am a newfound friend of Ahmed, so please keep that in mind.) O’Hanlon, a typical inside-the-Beltway, thinky-tanky self-proclaimed defense scholar, a defender of the Afghan surge and the drone war, cherry-picks a few quotes (out of 369 pages!) in a pique of critique. In so doing he sounds more like a Pentagon PR drone defending the farm than a serious reviewer making a dispassionate effort to understand and dissect Ahmed’s thesis. In contrast, Bina Shah, a novelist, has produced a far more nuanced review that, I think, accurately addresses the core of Ahmed’s thesis, albeit from what is clearly a sympathetic viewpoint. So what is their difference of opinion about? The Thistle and Drone documents the results of about 40 case studies in the worldwide crises of tribal-central government (periphery-center) relations in Islamic societies. Ahmed argues how the effects of globalization, especially the war on terror &#8212; doubly especially the drone war &#8212; is destabilizing the already-existing crises in these center-periphery relations, and is morphing into a catastrophic anti-tribal religious war. This is a subject about which most Americans, including O’Hanlon, as well as myself, know almost nothing. But at least I am learning, thanks to this book. I found Ahmed’s work to be a fascinating dissection of the tensions among the moral systems of traditional tribal cultures, Islam, and the modern states in which they exist.  It is both scholarly and highly informative &#8212; and it is elegantly written and easy to understand. Ahmed is<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=115439&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Islam</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/islam-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/screen-shot-2013-04-10-at-2-34-47-pm.png?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">chuckspinney2</media:title>
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		<title>Pentagon Pen Pal&#8230;</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2013/04/09/pentagon-pen-pal/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2013/04/09/pentagon-pen-pal/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Apr 2013 11:50:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Chuck Spinney</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nation.time.com/?p=114860</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Just received an interesting email from a Pentagon greybeard, who until recently had spent three decades toiling directly for a string of defense secretaries (which is why he needs to remain nameless). The dead-on-arrival proposed fiscal 2014 Pentagon budget, to be rolled out Wednesday, is the one President Obama was supposed to have submitted about six weeks ago. The programming beavers in the Pentagon are now actually working on the fiscal 2015 five-year plan, due out next February. That’s what my friend is alluding to in his reference to the &#8220;post-information era.&#8221; He writes: I am plenty glad I’m not in the Pentagon now.  The budget situation is screwed up beyond any recovery. FY13 is pegged at Sequestration with a bunch of constraints on cuts, FY14 budget is real late and dead on arrival. They don’t know what will happen on the hill into FY14 with carry-over of Sequestration levels. We truly are in the “Post-Information Era”—there is no reality left, it is all imaginary or hypothetical. I have to credit [former defense secretary Robert] Gates for ending the F-22, I didn’t think that would happen, but of course they left a huge pile of money to try to convert it to something more useful. In the meantime the AF fighter force ages at an amazing rate. The Navy solved the aging problem by default—cutting force levels plus accepting a mediocre product (eg F/A-18E/F) in order to keep age much lower than USAF. But even with this, of course, the Navy is trying to extend F/A-18C/D way beyond original design life, such as it was understood… Meanwhile the flying hours available for training are miniscule.  I have to wonder about safety. He’s not the only one glad he’s not at the Pentagon now…<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=114860&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Military Spending</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/military-spending-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/102493008.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">chuckspinney2</media:title>
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		<title>Iraq Invasion Anniversary: Inside the Decider&#8217;s Head</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2013/03/22/iraq-invasion-anniversary-inside-the-deciders-head/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2013/03/22/iraq-invasion-anniversary-inside-the-deciders-head/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Mar 2013 12:30:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Chuck Spinney</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nation.time.com/?p=112531</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In the summer of 2002, during the lead-up to the Iraq war, a White House official expressed displeasure with an article written by journalist Ron Suskind in Esquire. He asserted that people like Suskind were trapped “in what we call the reality-based community,” which the official defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” Suskind murmured something about enlightenment principles grounded in scientific empiricism, but the official cut him off, saying, “That&#8217;s not the way the world really works anymore &#8230; We&#8217;re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you&#8217;re studying that reality &#8212; judiciously, as you will &#8212; we&#8217;ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that&#8217;s how things will sort out. We&#8217;re history&#8217;s actors &#8230; and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” [Emphasis added.] This is a revealing statement about the mentality in the Bush White House before the Iraq war. Think about it: in effect, the official is claiming the mind of a decider, who is tasked with making decisions to cope with the constraints of the real world, has the power to create a new reality over and over again. Therefore the decider need not be worried about matching his actions against those constraints, or even observing those constraints, before making his decisions. Arrogant? To be sure. Unusual inside the Beltway? Not really, based on my experience in the Pentagon. But this outlook also reflects an incredibly stupid and dangerous way to orient one&#8217;s decision cycle to events in the real world. It is trite to say that madness occurs when the mind governing decisions and actions becomes systemically disconnected from the real world. But in the Versailles on the Potomac, where madness has risen to a high art form, reinforced by pseudo science, ideology and greed, all neatly packaged in compelling PowerPoint briefings, transformative visions, and amplified by an adoring mainstream media, it is difficult to know what the real world really is. Faced with this reality in the 1980s, the<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=112531&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>National Security</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/national-security/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/screen-shot-2013-03-21-at-2-26-25-pm.png?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Screen Shot 2013-03-21 at 2.26.25 PM</media:title>
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		<title>Neo-Imperialism and the Arrogance of Ignorance</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2013/02/27/neo-imperialism-and-the-arrogance-of-ignorance/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2013/02/27/neo-imperialism-and-the-arrogance-of-ignorance/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Feb 2013 13:59:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Chuck Spinney</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nation.time.com/?p=108749</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Most Americans do not realize the extent to which the U.S. is becoming involved militarily in the welter of conflicts throughout Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa (check out the chaos here). Although recent reports have tended to focus on the French intervention to kick Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) out  in Mali &#8212; a effort that may now be devolving into a far more complex guerrilla war, that French operation is just one operation in what may be shaping up to be a 21st Century version of the 19th Century Scramble for the resources of Africa. It&#8217;s a policy that, from the U.S. point of view, is not unrelated to the pivot to China,  given China&#8216;s growing market and aid presence in Africa. Last year, Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post provided a mosaic of glimpses into the widespread U.S. involvement in Africa in a series of excellent reports, including here, here and here.  The map below is my rendering of the basing information in Whitlock&#8217;s report (and others), as well as the relationship between that basing information to distribution of Muslim populations in central Africa. Pew Research Center &#38; Spinney While the correlation between Muslim populations and our intervention activities will suggest different messages to different audiences, given our recent history, it is certain to further inflame our relationship with militant Islam. Another sense of the metastasizing nature of our involvement in Africa can be teased out of the leaden, terrorist-centric, albeit carefully-constructed verbiage in the prepared answers submitted by Army General David M. Rodriguez  to Senate Armed Services Committee in support of his 13 February 2013 confirmation to be the new commander of the  U. S. Africa Command or Africom. I urge readers to at least skim this very revealing document. The terrorist &#8220;threats&#8221; in sub-Saharan Africa that are evidently so tempting to the neo-imperialists at Africom do not exist in isolation. They are intimately connected to the ethnic/tribal discontent in Africa, a subject alluded to but not really analyzed by Rodriquez or his senatorial questioners in their carefully choreographed Q&#38;A. Many of these tensions, for example, are in part a legacy<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=108749&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Africa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/africa/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/8111827620_38550c9849_b.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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		<title>A Pentagon Budget Primer, Leading to Two Questions for the Defense Secretary</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2013/02/11/a-pentagon-budget-primer-leading-to-two-questions-for-secretary-panetta/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2013/02/11/a-pentagon-budget-primer-leading-to-two-questions-for-secretary-panetta/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 11 Feb 2013 13:41:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Chuck Spinney</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nation.time.com/?p=105943</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[President Obama will submit a new five-year spending plan for the entire federal government in his annual budget message to Congress later this month. Included in his message will be the Pentagon’s five-year spending plan. The new plan covers Fiscal Years (FY) 2014 to FY18, and FY14 will begin in October 2013. That means the last year of this plan, i.e., FY18, will begin in October 2017, or nine months after Mr. Obama has left the White House and moved on to greener pastures. So, although the President has submitted a plan that includes budget details for FY18, two-thirds of that budget will be executed, and no doubt modified, by his successor as well as unfolding events. In other words, Obama can only be responsible for only the first four years of his new five-year plan — i.e., FY14 thru FY17. Lets take a look that these years. The new defense plan will embody a reduction of about $140 to $160 billion over the comparable four-year period in the five-year plan Obama sent to Congress last year (i.e., the FY13-17 plan). The looming possibility of a budget sequestration in March, however, could lop off another $50 billion per year, or a total of about $200 billion between FY14 and FY17 of the new plan. Assuming the sequester goes into effect as scheduled on March 1, we are looking at a total reduction over Obama’s second term of about $360 billion when compared to the four common years of last year’s plan. It is this cutback that outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is peddling as a doomsday scenario that will turn the United States into a second-rate power. The chart below places Panetta’s claim into the context of past defense budgets. I have aggregated these budgets into the four-year totals corresponding to each presidential term since Harry Truman’s second term began 64 years ago in 1949 (FY1950). Bear in mind, the effects of inflation have been removed and these four-year totals are presented in trillions of FY13 constant dollars. Spnney Several<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=105943&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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			<media:title type="html">Field of Honor</media:title>
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		<title>Why America&#8217;s Middle East Policy is Doomed</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2013/01/30/why-americas-middle-east-policy-is-doomed/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2013/01/30/why-americas-middle-east-policy-is-doomed/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Jan 2013 13:44:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Chuck Spinney</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nation.time.com/?p=104056</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The U.S. is pursuing a self-destructive grand strategy in the Middle East. It&#8217;s based on a pair of conflicting objectives, each bathed with high-toned rhetoric about promoting human rights and democracy: &#8211; The pursuit of strategic economic advantage in the Arab states. &#8211; Support of the consolidation of Israel. That&#8217;s the view of retired U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman, who shared it in a talk at the Washington-based Middle East Policy Council Jan. 16. Without explicitly saying so, Freeman shows how the triangle of mismatches among our words and actions and the world those words and actions purport to deal with contradict the criteria of a sensible grand strategy. He explains how interaction is sapping the moral authority of United States, and in so doing, it is dangerously reducing our capacity for independent action. Freeman&#8217;s line of argument is entirely consistent with the theories evolved by the late American strategist, Colonel John Boyd. Freeman reveals why these self-inflicted mismatches are coming to a grand-strategic head, and &#8212; if left unaddressed &#8212; will blowback to America’s detriment.  There is no wasted verbiage in Freeman’s text &#8212; every paragraph is a clearly-written building block in a sweeping tour de force that is worthy of your careful study. Grand Waffle in the Middle East By Chas W. Freeman Jr. Middle East Policy Council (MEPC)  &#8211;  January 16, 2013 Over the past half century or so the United States has pursued two main but disconnected objectives in West Asia and North Africa: on the one hand, Americans have sought strategic and economic advantage in the Arabian Peninsula, Persian Gulf, and Egypt; on the other, support for the consolidation of the Jewish settler state in Palestine.  These two objectives of U.S. policy in the Middle East have consistently taken precedence over the frequently professed American preference for democracy. These objectives are politically contradictory.  They also draw their rationales from distinct moral universes.  U.S. relations with the Arab countries and Iran have been grounded almost entirely in unsentimental calculations of interest.  The American relationship with Israel, by contrast, has rested almost entirely on religious and<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=104056&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Foreign Policy</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/foreign-policy-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/129229504.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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		<title>The Afghan Endgame&#8230;and Where It Will Lead</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2013/01/14/the-afghan-endgame-and-where-it-will-lead/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2013/01/14/the-afghan-endgame-and-where-it-will-lead/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 14 Jan 2013 14:37:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Chuck Spinney</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nation.time.com/?p=101930</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I have an Afghan friend, Hashim, who lives in Europe.  We correspond frequently on the situation in Afghanistan. He comes from an old distinguished Pashtun family; he has multiple degrees from the UK’s finest universities, knows Afghan (and world) history; and he admires the United States immensely, having lived here for a number of years as a young man. Hashim is an Afghan patriot, and while he is a realist, he understandably tends to see things in a hopeful light for his beloved country. This is especially true with regard to his hope that President Obama will correct the gross errors of his predecessor.  Hashim recently sent me an email describing his reactions to  two closely-related Jan. 9 news reports, from Reuters and the AP, in which U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes revealed that the White House was considering an option for a total withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end 2014. Rhodes said the White House was considering the so-called &#8220;zero option&#8221;  in addition to the more widely reported options for maintaining a limited troop presence 3,000 and 9,000 troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014. In contrast, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, is lobbying for an enduring presence 6,000 to 15,000. There are currently about 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. With one year to go, it is therefore clear that big changes are coming. Rhodes made clear that Obama’s final decision will not be made for several months, and he emphasized will be based on the twin U.S. security objectives of &#8211; (1) denying the so-called counterterrorism strategy of denying a safe haven to al Qaeda (read: a continuing targeted assassination strategy by special forces and drones) and &#8211; (2) ensuring that Afghan forces are trained and equipped to maintain internal security (read: ensuring that Afghan forces can neutralize the Taliban). Rhodes’s words, predictably (perhaps deliberately), created a firestorm of reaction among the neocons and advocates of empire in the U.S., as well as among those in Afghanistan who have benefitted from the U.S. presence. Members of the<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=101930&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>National Security</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/national-security/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/8367087162_9a8b62bcf7_b.jpeg?w=240</featured_image>
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		<title>The Real Challenges for the New SecDef</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2013/01/02/the-real-challenges-for-the-new-secdef/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2013/01/02/the-real-challenges-for-the-new-secdef/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 02 Jan 2013 11:46:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Chuck Spinney</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nation.time.com/?p=100153</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One of the most pressing problems facing the incoming secretary of defense, no matter who it ends up being, is posed by our denouement in Afghanistan. For reasons explained by Paul Sperry in an excellent 30 December op-ed in the New York Post, extricating ourselves from this quagmire is now taking on dangerous overtones, and the need to leave may be approaching at warp speed. The implications for the nature of the American withdrawal may be ominous, but they should not be unexpected.  It is now virtually certain that managing a coherent withdrawal will present a major challenge for the incoming defense secretary. President Obama&#8217;s 2009 surge strategy for what he and Democrats liked to portray as the &#8220;good war&#8221; in Afghanistan was premised upon the assumption that the US could quickly build up and train large Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), including army and police forces. Obama and the Pentagon sold this counterinsurgency strategy to the American people by promising a surge in American forces would quickly weaken the Taliban.  The emasculation of the Taliban would permit a rapid expansion of the Afghan security zones controlled by the Kabul government, while the rapid build up of the ANSF would stabilize and grow these zones even further, and thereby set the stage for a quick exit of U.S. combat forces beginning 18 months from the date of the surge. Despite its central premise of quickly building up an effective ANSF, the surge-based counterinsurgency plan produced by the Afghan theater commander General Stanley McChrystal did not provide a realistic analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the existing Afghan army and police forces.  Yet these forces were the foundation for the both the expansion and the promised sequence of developments that would enable our quick withdrawal. McChrystal&#8217;s grotesque oversight became obvious well before the plan&#8217;s approval, when his plan was leaked in the early fall of 2009 (as I explained here). The limitations of this plan were again brought dramatically to the President&#8217;s attention by Ambassador Eikenberry in cables that were leaked immediately before the plan&#8217;s approval in January<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=100153&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>National Security</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/national-security/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/1280px-us_navy_030926-f-2828d-405_aerial_view_of_the_pentagon_.jpeg?w=240</featured_image>
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		<title>Business As Usual Inside Obama’s Pentagon</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2012/12/06/business-as-usual-inside-obamas-pentagon/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2012/12/06/business-as-usual-inside-obamas-pentagon/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 06 Dec 2012 12:20:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Chuck Spinney</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://nation.time.com/?p=97213</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Winslow Wheeler’s three-part series on the Navy that wrapped up on Battleland Wednesday shows that the sea service is up to its old tricks. To wit, it is impregnating President Obama’s five-year defense program by front-loading today’s budget in a way that creates irresistible pressure to grow its future budgets &#8211;even if it takes a marginal reduction in the near term. Think of this as an emerging right to programmatic life issue, because, for reasons explained by Wheeler, abortion is out of the question, even though a programmatic miscarriage is inevitable. Any one who doubts this, or thinks this future pathway is unlikely or accidental, need only recall the braggadocio of Ronald Reagan’s chief navy stud, Navy Secretary John Lehman, when he told a seminar in January 1983 at the Brookings Institution, that it was “too late” to stop the buildup to a 600-ship navy. “We’ve already accomplished it,” he continued, “because we front-loaded (emphasis added) the budget.” Predictably, Lehman’ 600-ship navy miscarried a few years later in the late 1980s in terms of fleet size, if not money. Lehman used the Pentagon&#8216;s term of art &#8212; front loading &#8212; to describe the ubiquitous practice of downplaying the future consequences of a current programmatic decision in order to gain approval to proceed on a given course of action. The most familiar example is low-balling a cost estimate for a new weapon, but it front loading can take many sophisticated forms as I explained in my 1990 pamphlet Defense Power Games, where Lehman&#8217;s 1983 caper is described on pgs. 18-19. Examples of front-loading are everywhere in the U.S. political system, which is one reason why it has run aground: check out the low-balling of the cost of the second Iraq War in 2003 (Bush II), for example, low-balling the future consequences of tax cuts on future deficits in 1981 (Reagan) and 2001 (Bush II), and Medicare Part D (Bush II)). Like a strutting peacock showing feathers in a sexual game to attract a mate, Lehman’s front-loaded 600 ship Navy and Mitt Romney’s now forgotten 350-ship Navy<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=97213&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Military Spending</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/military-spending-2/</primary_category_link><letterbox>1</letterbox><featured_image>http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/96612160.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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