Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

34 • Shattering Illusions: A National Security Strategy for 2009-2017isolationist national posture. To answer the question of how much, the administrationwill need to consider a set of issues that relate military force to national objectives.Specifically:1.2.3.What role should military forces play in the national security of the UnitedStates?When is it appropriate to use military forces for missions other than defendingthe United States from attack? In particular, when is it appropriate to use suchforces outside the borders of the country?Given our answers to questions 1 and 2, how many tanks, fighter aircraft,aircraft carriers and other forces for large-scale, non-nuclear combat do weneed?The next three sections will illustrate how the new administration could addressthese questions.As Far as the United States is Concerned,What is the Role of Military Force in the 21st Century?To help citizens and members of Congress grasp why the nature of national defenseis changing, and so why its organization and funding must also change, the nationalsecurity strategy should supply the historical context. The rest of this section providesan outline.After winning its independence, the new country faced many potential armedthreats, from rebellion to depredations by Indians along the frontier, but the foundersfelt that most of them could be dealt with by the state militias. 22 In fact, there was aheated debate over whether to have an army, which explains the curious languagein Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution authorizing Congress to raise and fund anarmy, language not applied to the Navy.Although few argued that military force was anything but necessary – there weremajor wars in Europe, for example, every generation or so – for more than 150 yearsthe standing U.S. Army was quite small. It would be augmented with volunteers whennecessary, but then shrink back to its normal size. 23 So George Armstrong Custer,who had been a dashing major general of cavalry in the Civil War, died 11 years laterwearing a lieutenant colonel’s silver leaves.This arrangement worked so long as the country observed George Washington’swarning to avoid foreign entanglements. 24 For 130 years, this was not difficult: Thenew nation was absorbed with spreading across the continent, subduing its originalinhabitants and incorporating millions of new ones, a destiny that was manifest to