Wikistrat: Barnett on US National Military Strategy
Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett on the new US National Military Strategy:
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Tom did a very nice job with this piece, particularly his reference to the historically underexamined but diplomatically significant Nixon Doctrine. He’s right. The strategic shift is a radical departure from the previous Bush era and is closely following the mammoth budgetary requests of our high tech services that are gearing up, along with industry lobbyists, to battle for every last dollar of a shrinking defense pie ( one reason I recently asked, Is COIN Dead?).
However, the military strategy should be driving acquisitions rather than being a shopping list transformed into a strategy ( see Shape the Future Force section) considering we are in at least two wars, perhaps three depending on how you count, from which we have yet to bring to a satisfactory resolution. That there is a shift here is not bad per se – East Asia is certainly far more significant to American security than is Afghanistan but that shift is so heavily laden with major economic and diplomatic variables, which, frankly, are of much greater longitudinal importance than military operational planning or short term force structure.
