“THE PROJECT ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT (POGO)”
“Keep pretending you can do it all when we can’t even defeat a band of Afghan insurgents after an investment of 20 years—and more than $2 trillion. It’s long past time for the nation to develop a realistic and affordable defense strategy grounded in reality.“
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“The Pentagon’s blueprint for building U.S. military might is the nation’s National Defense Strategy (NDS), last updated (PDF) in 2018. It’s always been, as most such documents are, a buzzword barrage that tends to avoid the hard choices that dollars impose. It is, as they like to say around the Defense Department, the “long pole in the tent” that drives policy and procurement choices.
It has become the go-to lever to crowbar money from the U.S. Treasury to the U.S. military: “I want to see a 3-5% increase over last year’s level after inflation consistent with the National Defense Strategy,” Representative Mike Rogers (R-AL), the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said (PDF) last month. “That is my number one, number two and number three priority.”
The nation’s defense-industrial base “is critical to ensuring our Army can provide the responsiveness, the depth and the capability demanded of us in the National Defense Strategy,” said Lieutenant General Duane Gamble, Army deputy chief of staff for logistics.
Admiral Phil Davidson, commander of the Indo-Pacific Command has drafted a “Regain the Advantage” (PDF) report based on “our strategic initiatives to implement the National Defense Strategy.” This includes “enhancing our force design and our force posture in the region, strengthening our network of allies and partners, and advancing our exercises, our experimentation and our innovation,” he added (PDF). “Consistent with our National Defense Strategy, the United States Space Force will ensure we compete, deter and win from a position of strength, securing our way of life and our national security,” said Air Force General Jay Raymond, chief of U.S. Space Force.
But is the NDS a true strategy, or merely a combat chimera? Representative Adam Smith, the Washington state Democrat who chairs the armed services committee, finds its goals of winning an “all-out” war with China, thwarting Russian aggression, deterring Iran and North Korea, bolstering nuclear weapons and missile defenses, and dealing with terrorism little more than a wish list. “When you read the National Defense Strategy, the goals that it lays out are basically unachievable,” he said April 13. “This has led to a very difficult situation within the defense budget: we can never possibly do what we are being told we have to do.”
That’s the bottom line”
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