This is a Real Question?

Could the United States military pull off a Falklands-style rapid reaction intervention to defeat an aggressor in an unanticipated theater?

The author is doubtful, since we focus more on moving to existing theaters (Europe, the Gulf, and South Korea), where friendly hosts can receive our reinforcements.

But if we can't pull off what Britain did in 1982, we've wasted an awful lot of money on the Marine Corps--which at 200,000 in 2012 (from my print copy of The Military Balance) is larger than the British army back then (less than 160,000 in 1980)--and an impressive array of Navy ships to move them across and over a distant beach.

And our Army paratroopers might have something to say about that ability.

So yeah, we could do that.

Would we without massive planning and accompanying PowerPoint presentations? That's another question altogether.