Guns, butter, and Obama

Canceling Lockheed Martin's F-22 stealth fighter and F-35 joint strikefFighter, the Virginia Class submarine, the V-22 Osprey, the Zumwalt Class destroyer, and Boeing and Raytheon's missile defense system, combined with some judicious reductions in other budget items, would save $55 billion annually, according to Foreign Policy in Focus's Unified Security Budget.

The problem with U.S. military spending isn't just expensive weapons, but the underlying philosophy that the use of force is a valid policy tool. And on that question, the incoming Obama administration has yet to break from the past.

While Obama has pledged to stress diplomacy over warfare, he has also promised to "maintain the most powerful military on the planet" and to increase the armed forces by some 90,000 soldiers. According to the Congressional Budget Office, that will cost at least $50 billion over five years.

The most disturbing initiative, however, is a recent push to "reshape" the armed forces. A recent Defense Department directive elevates "IW" (irregular warfare) to a level "as strategically important as traditional warfare," arguing that for the "foreseeable future, winning the Long War against violent extremists will the central objective of U.S. policy."

This concept is no different than the "hearts and minds" counterinsurgency strategy that failed so disastrously in Southeast Asia two generations ago. The directive assumes that military disasters result from impatience and poor tactics. If you're willing to fight a "Long War," don't kick in too many doors, lunch with the locals, and hand out lots of candy to the kids, you win.

Occupational hazards

But the key to understanding why the U.S. and NATO are losing in Afghanistan and Iraq is the word "occupation."

Writing almost a century ago, T.E. Lawrence laid out what he called the algebra of occupation: "Rebellion must have an unassailable base … it must have a sophisticated alien enemy, in the form of a disciplined army of occupation too small to dominate the whole area. It must have a friendly population … sympathetic to the point of not betraying rebel movements to the enemy. Granted mobility, security … time and doctrine … victory will rest with the insurgents, for the algebraical [sic] factors are in the end decisive."

Lawrence was writing about the British occupation of Iraq, but he might as well have been channeling the future. His conclusion should give the Obama administration pause about its plans for a "surge" of troops into Afghanistan: "Against them [the algebraic factors], perfections of means and spirit struggle quite in vain."

History is replete with examples of Lawrence's formula too numerous to list. Indeed, the few examples of successful counterinsurgency — the Americans in the Philippines and the British in Malaya — were the result of unique historical factors that have never transferred well.

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