Tag Archives: defense

Defense and the Russians

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The Russian government has shown their fundamental view of the United States and of their relationship with us.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said last year that Russia will retaliate militarily if it does not reach an agreement with the United States and NATO on our missile defense shield.

At a daylong Missile Defense Conference that took place in Moscow last week, the Russians made explicit their threat against us.  General Nikolai Makarov, the Russian armed forces chief of staff said, referring to missile defense installations currently contemplated by us in eastern Europe,

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National Defense in Asia

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Japan has begun taking a more aggressive approach to its national defense and to its partnership with the US in regional defense.  This may be spurred by the People’s Republic of China’s naked aggression in the South China Sea against the Republic of the Philippines and their threats against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam over the latter’s activities in the Sea.  This may be spurred by northern Korea’s attempted launch of an ICBM—Japan had already announced they’d attempt to shoot it down if its path were over/toward Japan.  This may be spurred by the fact that the PRC said last March that it plans to increase defense spending over 11% in 2012, making their defense spending second highest in the world after the our own.

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National Security and Education

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We don’t have enough concerns for our future.  Now a couple of items point out yet another.

The Council for Foreign Relations commissioned a report by an Independent Task Force which was co-chaired by chaired by Joel I. Klein, former head of New York City public schools, and Condoleezza Rice, former US National Security Advisor and Secretary of State.  The report laid out in so many words the failure of our K-12 education system, and the costs to our nation’s ability to survive if we don’t correct these failures.

A member of the task force, ex-Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, has one summary:

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Another Thought on Self Defense

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I wrote, a short time ago, about individual self-defense.  In this post, I’d like to explore a little bit of the self-defense rights of a nation.  Senator Jon Kyle (R, AZ) asked, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, “What’s at Stake in the Missile-Defense Debate?”  His question also raises a larger question concerning a nation’s right to self-defense.  I’ll address the second question first, then I’ll talk about the role of missile defenses within that right.

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Automobile Automation

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The Wall Street Journal‘s L. Gordon Crovitz is writing about the really quite nearby future of driving.  There is an upside to this:

Tom Vanderbilt, author of the book Traffic, writes: “After a few minutes the idea of a computer-driven car seemed much less terrifying than the panorama of indecision, BlackBerry-fumbling, rule-flouting, and other vagaries of the humans around us—including the weaving driver who struggled to film us as he passed.”

There’s a downside, too, beyond the aspects of the (still very important in my not at all humble view) sheer joy of driving my car and the need for a human to be in control of his machine, rather than the other way around:

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America’s Future—Defense Policy Principles, Part IVb

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In the post just below, I described some of the force structures needed to help secure our future.  In this post, I complete that description.

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America’s Future—Defense Policy Principles, Part IVa

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Part III was posted here (and from there can be found the chain of links containing the full series of these posts—or search on “America’s Future” in my blog’s search functionality).  In this final post of this occasional series, I’ll write about the general force structures needed to effect our Defense principles and policies.  Much of what I suggest below will require technological development; however, none of that is futuristic—indeed, some of that technology already is in one or another prototyping stage today.  Further, these force structures support another concept: never fight fair—only fight to win with maximum enemy casualties and maximum damage to enemy entity infrastructure and with minimum friendly casualties and minimum damage to friendly infrastructure.  War is not a sporting event; national survival is in the balance.

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America’s Future—Defense Policy Principles, Part III

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I wrote about fundamental principles of Defense policy here.  In this post, I want to talk about some of the Defense policies themselves that are necessary to implement those principles; in a later post I’ll talk about force structures needed to begin to give concreteness and bite to our Defense.  I won’t go into identifying those policies that are suitable and already in place, or unsuitable ones that should be removed, nor will this post presume to be an exhaustive list of policies.  Instead, I’ll  identify what I consider the important with a view to offering a point of departure for continued discussion.

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National Defense Cuts vs National Defense Purpose

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Yochi J. Dreazen  of the National Journal describes the announced US military reduction as follows.  He characterizes the reduction as “a decisive shift away from manpower-heavy counterinsurgencies like Afghanistan,”  and this isn’t inaccurate.  Our military leadership, in fact, insists

that ground wars like Afghanistan are a thing of the past while air and naval conflicts with nations like Iran or China represent the most important threats of the future. The document explicitly said the Pentagon will shift military and financial resources away from Europe and toward the Middle East and Asia-Pacific regions.

and consequently,

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National Defense or National Security

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When did they become mutually exclusive concepts?  In the Progressive meme, the downsizing of the US’ status in the world is in full force.  Because of cuts to our national security—our defense—budget driven by Progressive intransigence in cutting spending anywhere at all and their parallel intransigence in demanding increased taxes, our military capability is shrinking dramatically.  Rather than being able to fight two wars simultaneously, which we have been able to do for decades, the defense cuts will reduce us to being able only to

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