The Obama Doctrine: When Does Caution Become Retreat?

[mota bhai 2,675]

By JAMES KITFIELD on March 26, 2014

President Barack Obama has honed the themes of military restraint and economic renewal into something like a doctrine – a core principle around which national security and foreign affairs policies could be organized and prioritized. Sensing the mood of a war-weary public and Congress, Obama was bent on ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and appears equally determined to avoid further military entanglements. After a decade of conflict, the Great Recession and an unprecedented rise in national debt, he not unreasonably decided that the United States was in danger of strategic and economic over-extension, the bane of great powers and empires throughout history.

But the world, as many defense experts note almost every day, is not a peaceful place. The Kremlin’s land-grab in Ukraine, China’s aggressive claim to disputed islands and airspace in Asia, Egypt’s military coup and the Syrian regime’s years-long slaughter of civilians and ethnic cleansing all illustrate the strategic risks inherent in a doctrine of restraint and military retrenchment in a time of profound instability. To Secretary Hagel’s declaration that the U.S. military would no longer be sized for large ground operations, Vladimir Putin has fashioned a refrain reminiscent of his 20th-century countryman Leon Trotsky: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”

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The current drawdown has closer parallels to the post-Vietnam era of the 1970s, when the United States was ending another very unpopular and unsatisfying war and looking to regroup in a still dangerous world. Then, as now, the Nixon administration sought to end counterinsurgency operations by withdrawing U.S. troops and accelerating the handoff of security responsibilities to local forces through a strategy of “Vietnamization.” A similar process is underway in Afghanistan.

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Then as now, the Nixon administration adopted a doctrine that emphasized strategic air and naval forces over ground troops, eschewed future counterinsurgency operations and called on allies and regional partners to take more responsibility for their own security.

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Indeed, to grasp the perils of this era of retrenchment after the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s important to understand how at some invisible point the Nixon Doctrine of retrenchment became a de facto strategy of managing military decline, with disastrous results by decade’s end. A balky Congress weary of the Vietnam conflict and of Nixon himself withdrew air support from South Vietnamese forces, leading to the fall of Saigon and South Vietnam in 1975. Reductions in defense spending cut too deep for too long, infamously leading to the “hollow Army” of 1980 ... Sensing our strategic weakness, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and installed a puppet regime in 1979, putting Soviet forces on the doorstep of the Persian Gulf, America’s energy breadbasket.

http://breakingdefense.com/2014/03/the-obama-doctrine-when-does-caution-become-retreat/

[Danno 1,228]

Retreat is when you move away from a fixed point.

It seems Obama has used much more measured language in regards to Ukraine than he did with say Syria, thats a good thing.

Obama is so predictable it has become his weakness.

Reagan always had this air about him like he might start a war if the mood struck, that worked to our advantage.

Though I did not Vote for McCain, In hindsight I think providence kept him from office. For there is no problem in the world that he feels can not be improved with the ointment of force.