During U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ visit to China in January, Beijing heralded his arrival with the first public flight of its J-20 stealth fighter. Tonight, in honor of the arrival of General Chen Bingde, chief of staff of China’s People’s Liberation Army, the U.S. will return the favor: with a joint concert featuring the …
Politics
Like It or Not, U.S. Troop Levels in Afghanistan Now In Play
The White House and Pentagon won’t admit it, but everybody else knows the size and scope of the continuing U.S. presence in Afghanistan is now subject to debate. That’s the result of a perfect storm of factors — the killing of Osama bin Laden, the weariness of the American public, and the continuing zaniness of Afghan President …
NATO’s New, Less U.S.-Centric, Way of Waging War
“So did you kill Gaddafi last night?”
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen laughed generously at the temerity of the question. The former Danish prime minister — now chief of the most powerful military alliance in history — unspooled his political answer to an impolitic query. “Let me stress that we do not target …
A Magazine For Military Spouses
We noted the other day that there is a growing split between the U.S. military and U.S. society. Here’s another example: there is now a magazine for military spouses called, believe it or not, Military Spouse. This tells us two things: military spousing has become almost a career-lifestyle thing, and advertisers believe military …
Dear Diary: Which bin Laden Scares You Most?
The U.S. government can’t make up its mind when it comes to Osama bin Laden. Last Saturday, it held an unusual press conference where it released a snippet of video showing a feeble, aging terrorist staring at his flickering image on a small TV screen. On Wednesday, government officials were whispering about bin Laden’s bloody diary …
Aye-Aye Captain: Reverse Course!
The Navy always seems to have troubles with sex and gender relations. Doesn’t matter if it’s the hetero- or homosexual, they just seem to flub it more than the other services. So it has happened once again: the sea service has just changed its mind on telling its chaplains they will be allowed to conduct same-sex marriages and civil …
The Vexing U.S.-Pakistani Relationship Heads South, Post-bin Laden
Pakistan is a recipe with all the ingredients for disaster: start with an engineer who steals blueprints for nuclear weapons, and succeeds in constructing the Islamic world’s first atomic bomb. Then he peddles those schematics to pretty much anyone will to pay. The country, a fragile democracy, is actually run by the army, part of …
China $yndrome
It was a month ago that we noted in the dead-tree version of Time the insanity of borrowing money hand-over-fist from China to help fund the U.S. government, including the American military (the U.S. is borrowing 40% of what it spends, much of it from Beijing). “We are borrowing cash from China to pay for weapons that we would …
Lines in the Sand: House Chairman Overseeing Military Spending Challenges President Obama
“With equipment that is falling apart and a war entering its tenth year, the strain on the troops–our most precious resource–can only be described as severe.”
In his May 5 speech at The Heritage Foundation, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, made it clear that even with the recent …
Military Health Care: Helping Retirees, Screwing the Taxpayers
Panetta’s Challenge
When the President announced his new national security team last week most of the attention focused on David Petraeus at CIA and the problem of winding down the war in Afghanistan. Leon Panetta’s nomination as Secretary of Defense went almost unnoticed, by comparison.
But Panetta has the bigger challenge: how to manage a build down in …
CBO Defense Option #2
Another Congressional Budget Office way to trim defense spending is to slow the rate of growth in troops’ pay. That’s going to be a tough sell, especially during wartime. For a decade, Congress has boosted the Pentagon’s annual recommendation that military pay raises match the employment cost index by adding 0.5% to each year’s ECI. …
Memo to the Military: Money’s Tight and Getting Tighter
Ashton Carter is the U.S.military’s chief weapons buyer. Judging from what he said yesterday at The Heritage Foundation about saving money in the defense budget, his job is about to get much more complicated if the Obama Administration gets its way by trying to reduce the federal budget deficit on the backs of those in …