We have been fighting the war on Islamist terrorism for two decades. There is a reason it is called the Long War. But even at the peak of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, it did not approach the scale of losses in troops and equipment and the expenditure of ammunition that a lengthy war against a peer military power would require.
Yes, we have hard defense choices to make:
The U.S. military does not have enough logistics capability to rapidly deploy for and sustain a fight against a peer-level adversary. But the magnitude of the imbalance, and the fact that the U.S. defense budget is very unlikely to grow enough to address the imbalance while continuing to fund current combat capabilities, requires recognizing a very difficult truth. To enable the United States to prevail in a fight against a peer-level adversary oceans away — and in a potentially protracted contest — requires shifting a large portion of the defense budget from combat capabilities to deployability and sustainment assets.
I commented early in the year:
In an age of great power competition, America needs to be able to win a war with significant attrition to our forces. We got used to the post-Cold War era when only small enemies could be smashed in conventional battle. One effect of that more than a quarter century of time is that America's industrial base cannot sustain a long war against a peer military.
And just this morning, as well.
But it is hardly the first time I've mentioned this issue. Especially the change from the post-Cold War era. And not just for sustaining the Navy for a sea control campaign far from our shores. Getting over there requires a lot of effort to move and sustain a lot of stuff.
When giants fight, nobody ever comes home by Christmas.
So I heartily endorse a commitment to rebuilding our capacity to deploy and sustain forces for a long fight.
I pray our potential enemies have worse problems:
China almost certainly isn't as strong as they project. But fighting so close to their own country might make that a less-than-decisive factor in a war with America.
As I side note, I believe a co-author of that initially cited article, Brad Martin, was the teaching assistant in one of my international relations political science classes at Michigan. He was a good guy and a rare TA who knew his stuff on military matters.
