{"id":10155,"date":"2012-06-27T19:59:46","date_gmt":"2012-06-27T19:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=10155"},"modified":"2012-06-27T19:59:46","modified_gmt":"2012-06-27T19:59:46","slug":"new-article-the-coming-national-defense-crack-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=10155","title":{"rendered":"New Article: The Coming National Defense Crack-Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nI have been asked to contribute foreign policy and defense pieces to IVN – The Independent Voter Network<\/a><\/strong>. The emphasis at IVN \u00a0is on well-supported brevity to inform a general audience of prospective voters for 2012 and not to entertain the legions of doctorate-seeking war nerdom with iterations of mutant 4GW, hybrid neo-Clausewitzian, counter-counter-insurgency theoretical castles in the sky \ud83d\ude42 Different readership there.<\/p>\n

Here is my first article:<\/p>\n

The Coming National Defense Crack-Up<\/a><\/h3>\n

….Despite a major speech on defense issues given at the Citadel in 2011, Governor Romney\u2019s strengths as a candidate are not associated with national security, while President Obama\u2019s staff prefer to emphasize to the administration\u2019s many successes in counterterrorism operations instead of the accumulation of serious issues faced by the Department of Defense, the armed services and America\u2019s returning veterans.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This lack of debate is problematic because the next president will require a mandate for his solutions to the Pentagon\u2019s laundry list of problems if they are to have a hope of passing the Congress in tight budgetary times.\u00a0Some of the national defense problems are structural while others constitute a legacy of ten years of war in Afghanistan, Iraq and in remote lawless regions, but the political capital needed to fix them will be substantial:<\/strong><\/p>\n