Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

Col. Chet Richards • 29prices for the most basic ingredient of our well-being – energy – and the eviscerationof our military, burdened by a worn-out and anachronistic inventory of weapons anda cadre of soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen overstressed by repeated deploymentsto Iraq and Afghanistan.On the balance, therefore, the United States will benefit from a national securitystrategy that avoids the trap of predicting or programming the future, yet enunciatesa clear strategic purpose for the use of military and other elements of national power(including when not to use them). Such a grand strategy will determine the placeof the United States within the international system – reassuring allies, attractingthe uncommitted, and giving pause to potential opponents, which is a fair trade-offfor alerting them – and it will also help solve some of the problems inherent to alldemocracies, that of letting internal politics drive the nation’s involvement with themilitary forces of other countries.A National Security Strategy for the United StatesPerhaps our diplomacy of the first five decades of this century, and our reactionsto the very different problems that have assailed us since 1950, both reflectrealities much deeper than our responses of either period: namely, the lackof any accepted, enduring doctrine for relating military strength to politicalpolicy, and a persistent tendency to fashion our policy towards others witha view to feeding a pleasant image of ourselves rather than to achieving real,and desperately needed, results in our relations with others. 9This chapter represents an executive summary of a national security strategy asmight be presented by the new administration to the 111th Congress. It is intendedto provide all the security that military force can, while reducing the burden on theAmerican taxpayer and thereby freeing resources for citizens to spend or invest asthey see fit.The elements of this strategy, or any national security strategy, are:• The endstate – what the United States should look like and wants to achieve insidethe international system. Devising a new analytical framework that helps policymakersand senior military leaders to define and routinely reevaluate the purpose,method and endstate for the use of American power must be a top priority if Americais to avoid unnecessary conflicts and stop squandering its wealth and power.Defining the endstate is the job of the highest political leadership of thecountry speaking on behalf of the American people who elected them. It is anentirely political task that must precede and therefore lies beyond the scopeof national security strategy. The new National Defense Strategy adopts thisapproach, repeating the political objectives of promoting freedom, justice