Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

46 • Shattering Illusions: A National Security Strategy for 2009-2017the survivability of the force and its ability to be effective. The administrationshould be wary of establishing a goal of total nuclear disarmament, however.Without nuclear weapons, large-scale conventional war between major powersbecomes not only possible again but inevitable. The world would resumewhere it was in July 1945, before the Trinity test showed that nuclear weaponscould be built. 53Although disarmament is neither practical nor desirable, considerable rationalizationof and ultimately reduction in our nuclear force is possible; materialsmade available by the Center for Defense Information and its associated WorldSecurity Institute address alternatives.2. Propose a plan for rationalizing conventional forces and then obtaining bettervalue from the resources we devote to them. This plan should include:a. The ultimate size and composition of a conventional force to cooperate withallies where the employment of such forces is required. There are severalchapters in this book that describe such a force. This force would be adequatefor all other uses of conventional military force by the United States.b. A drawdown schedule for transitioning from our current force to the targetforce.c. A program for mitigating the economic and social dislocations this willcause.Chapters three through 11 address alternatives for realigning our conventionalforces and their budgets to the realities of the 21st century.3. Land and air forces that the administration wishes to retain but that are nottrained or equipped for overseas employment with allies should be transferredto the National Guard and placed under the control of the states. The administrationmust carefully consider how to rationalize the Navy and Coast Guard tobest perform the range of maritime missions, which covers the full spectrumfrom nuclear warfare to law enforcement to rescue at sea.4. For law enforcement, insurgency and COIN: Retain some portion of our naval,Coast Guard and special operations forces to provide assistance for internationallaw enforcement, counterproliferation, anti-piracy, hostage rescue andother activities in conjunction with our allies. Such forces may also participatein allied/international ventures to change regimes that have threatened their