COL Douglas Macgregor shows the stark choices ahead a defense establishment in the US and the west that is inexorably grinding to a halt in effectiveness and incompetence.
The incoming President has three choices:
1. Allow service bureaucracies or external events to drive outcomes, resulting in few or no savings. This is akin to letting the ship drift aimlessly, at the mercy of the storm.
2. Make marginal adjustments to the defense status quo, avoiding conflicts but achieving little change and only modest savings. This is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic—it won’t save the ship.
3. Leverage the fiscal crisis to reduce overhead, streamline defense investment, and reset the force structure, increasing capability and promising major savings. This is the bold course correction needed to navigate the storm safely.
The senior ranks have become so bloated and filled with ineffectual leaders that organizational entropy is inevitable.
It is now painfully obvious that American fighting forces have declined in strength and numbers, but four-star overhead has grown out of all proportion to the nation’s security needs. Reducing the numbers of serving four-star generals and admirals along with their large and expensive headquarters is more vital than ever. In a perverse way, the expansion of general officer headquarters overhead follows Boyle’s gas law (also referred to as the Boyle–Mariotte law). When contained, gas will always expand to the limits of the container. So will headquarters and the flag officers they serve.
He concludes:
Compelling change in U.S. national defense is tantamount to war. Bold, new initiatives can succeed. Moving to the point of least resistance leads to failure and no change. There is no time to lose. The Department of Defense is cannibalizing itself to meet operational demands, and, in the process, we are getting older faster and destroying our most precious resource—human capital. Bold changes are necessary now.
If the American People are ever to rectify the abysmal record of the American military in action in the last three decades, shrink, then replace the senior ranks. Change in organization and culture will not result in streamlined unified military command structures and more fighting power without new senior military leadership. Modern warfare will demand much more than PowerPoint slides or dominating weak opponents with overwhelming firepower.
The clock is ticking and the point of no return is fast approaching.
I have embarked on a multi-part series on my new podcast, WarNotes, to offer a plan to stop the madness and re-frame the DoD to military sobriety.
Stay tuned.
https://ronpaulinstitute.org/navigating-the-fiscal-storm-a-new-course-for-u-s-national-defense/
Email at cgpodcast@pm.me
