Friday, November 11, 2016

Trump's Muscular and Modern Peace

November 11, 2016


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Trump's Muscular and Modern Peace
  • Will Trump really end "Forever War"?
  • A bigger military budget is on the way.
  • A modernized approach will lead to peace through smarter strength.

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The American people are getting tired of perpetual deployments for their young men and women fighting overseas. Is there a better way to do it? And does Donald Trump know this way?
David DittmanDear Wall Street Daily Reader,
It is perhaps the most Reaganesque of Donald Trump's many campaign-trail promises: to strengthen the military so that it's "so big and so strong and so great" that "nobody's going to mess with us."
Peace through strength, indeed.
The president-elect drew, in vivid terms, many contrasts with his vanquished foe, Hillary Clinton.
One that appealed to millions of forever-war-weary Americans — many of his voters, of course, but also many of hers — is his avowed distaste for overseas intervention versus the Establishment's incessant adventurism.
As Peter Baker of The New York Times put it, "Donald J. Trump's stunning election victory on Tuesday night rippled way beyond the nation's boundaries, upending an international order that prevailed for decades and raising profound questions about America's place in the world."
It may mark the end of nearly a century of bipartisan internationalism.
Well, we'll see.
Trump brilliantly tapped into long-simmering anxieties about the changing complexion of America - geostrategically and economically at least as much as socially.
But it is an increasingly complicated world out there. And political rhetoric often does not — cannot — translate directly to policy prescriptions.
Here's the crux of that old campaigning-versus-governing dichotomy.
Trump certainly mastered the "well, to govern you have to win" part of the deal.
Trump brilliantly tapped into long-simmering anxieties about the changing complexion of America - geostrategically and economically at least as much as socially.
The art will come with understanding the interplay of his multitude of visceral appeals to voters and translating that to an effective plan to execute the office and preserve, protect, and defend the country.
For example, Trump's approach to energy policy — in short, more domestically sourced fossil fuels — is sure to mark the end of any U.S. participation in a global effort to combat climate change.
And climate change, according to "a bipartisan group of defense experts and former military leaders," poses "a grave threat to national security."
As Erika Bolstad noted for ClimateWire on September 14, 2016, "Stresses from climate change can increase the likelihood of international or civil conflict, state failure, mass migration and instability in strategically significant areas around the world."
One of those "stresses" is drought:
A change in wintertime Mediterranean precipitation toward drier conditions has likely occurred over 1902–2010 whose magnitude cannot be reconciled with internal variability alone. Anthropogenic greenhouse gas and aerosol forcing are key attributable factors for this increased drying, though the external signal explains only half of the drying magnitude.
That's according to research led by Martin Hoerling of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published online by the Journal of Climate in March 2012 under the title "On the Increased Frequency of Mediterranean Drought."
We covered some of this ground in the August 2, 2016, issue of Wall Street Daily:
Lack of water is driving people to desperate acts.
According to the World Economic Forum, the water crisis is the No. 1 risk confronting the globe, based on impact to society. Indeed, water stress has been a major factor contributing to recent turmoil in the Middle East.
Of course, the direct causes of Syria's civil war were political – primarily, opposition to President Bashar al-Assad.
But a 2006 drought – likely the worst in at least the past 900 years and almost definitely the worst in 500 years – drove Syrian farmers to migrate to urban centers, setting the stage for massive uprisings.
According to a 2015 paper published by the National Academy of Sciences, "The rapidly growing urban peripheries of Syria marked by illegal settlements, overcrowding, poor infrastructure, unemployment and crime were neglected by the Assad government and became the heart of the developing unrest."
Would a President Trump have involved the United States in the Syrian conflict? Who's to say?
Candidate Trump did, however, promise to "bomb the sh*t out of ISIS" and also bomb oil fields controlled by the Islamic State and then seize the assets and distribute profits to military veterans wounded while fighting the battle.
And climate change, according to "a bipartisan group of defense experts and former military leaders," poses "a grave threat to national security."
Panning out a bit, Trump has promised to leave troops in Afghanistan to address what he describes as "a mess." And he's renewed America's commitment to Israel, our long-term ally in the Middle East.
What marks a significant and perhaps destabilizing change is Trump's promise to increase U.S. military presence in the East and South China Seas. That's a direct challenge to China, and it shifts our relationship with the Middle Kingdom to a more aggressive gear.
According to Mike Wynne, a former secretary of the Air Force and current adviser to the president-elect, Trump plans "a fundamental rethinking of what it takes to keep the United States safe and to advance our national interests, in short, to make America great again in the eyes of the world. In all of the military domains — ground, marine, air, space, and cyberspace — we need to restore U.S. leadership."
For Trump, that seems to imply "bigger."
He wants a 350-ship Navy. He also wants to increase the active Air Force fighter inventory to 1,200, grow the Marine Corps from 27 to 36 battalions, and boost the Army from 490,000 to 540,000 troops.
And he's likely to continue a push led by the Army to modernize military tactical deployment via integration of those military domains, "ground, marine, air, space, and cyberspace."
That multi-domain battle concept, which we described in the October 6, 2016, issue of Wall Street Daily, continues to take shape.
"We are starting to put together these multi-domain exercises in the real domain — boots in the dirt, sailors on the ocean, etc.," said Gen. David Perkins, the leader of the Army's Training & Doctrine Command (TRADOC) and the author of the MDB concept, to Breaking Defense this week.
United States Pacific Command (PACOM) will hold its war games in early 2017, while European Command (EUCOM) will hold its joint exercise in 2018. TRADOC observers will observe smaller-scale war games around the world, too.
Military modernization also includes the buildout of an increasingly sophisticated Cyber Command (CYBERCOM), whose main task is to defend the Department of Defense Information Network (DODIN).
CYBERCOM's mission would include any response to Russia or other overseas cyber adversary beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement.
Meanwhile, Task Force Ares is an all-service effort to hack the Islamic State and interdict its use of the internet for propaganda, recruitment, and command-and-control purposes.
As Breaking Defense reports, "The Army is also experimenting with tactical cyber teams, which would protect units' wireless networks on the battlefield and attack their enemies." These teams are participating in the PACOM and EUCOM wargames.
Perhaps we should christen this the era of peace through smarter strength.

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Old Things New
Get to know the types of military commanders President-elect Trump has in mind for this new era of noninterventionist peace through strength, two bigger-than-life characters immortalized on film for their exploits on major 20th-century battlefields.
Director Franklin J. Schaffner's 1970 multiple Oscar-winner Patton is worth it for the opening monologue alone, delivered with extraordinary life by Best Actor George C. Scott. ("Be seated. I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.")
Stick around for a nuanced portrayal (Francis Ford Coppola gets screen story and screenplay credits) of a warrior-poet with an extremely complex concept of love and respect for his troops.
Director Joseph Sargent's 1977 film MacArthur didn't generate nearly the buzz of its predecessor "iconic general" biography. But Gregory Peck is characteristically outstanding in the lead role.
A lifelong liberal mooted as a potential challenger to Ronald Reagan in the 1970 California gubernatorial campaign, Peck was not a fan of MacArthur's when filming began.
Over the course of working through the script, however, the Oscar- and Presidential Medal of Freedom-winning actor and humanitarian came to admire the general for overcoming significant challenges.
"I shall return" and "Duty, Honor, Country" persist as expressions of fundamentally American values of courage and commitment.
Smart Investing,
David Dittman
David Dittman
Editorial Director, Wall Street Daily

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