America’s Global Strategic Losses

Iraq , Afghanistan ,Georgia, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela are concurrent, but not convergent, strategic losses. Iran and North Korea are “convergent” losses- two enemies who are both edging closer to being possessors of nuclear weapons (*North Korea’s explosion of a supposed nuclear bomb last year does not prove its ability- as the bomb may have been conventional-purchased- or a partial failure), capable of delivering those weapons. Iraq, Afghanistan, Georgia and Venezuela are geo-political military losses. “Limited” efforts to win wars and geo-political showdowns are yielding clear results- failure. America’s military is being stretched to its limits with Iraq and Afghanistan, the current financial crisis threatens the ability to America to fund its military at current levels, and the balance of global power is ebbing away from America. With a loss of financial clout, government budgets will be sapped by insolvent banks, and the geo-political losses mentioned above, will make it all the more difficult for America to remain a world leader, instead, leading to a multi-polar world as Russian Prime-Minister, Putin, recently talked about. There were people talking about America’s decline- overall as a world power, back in the 80’s and 90’s- they were dead wrong. Now a sustained erosion of American geo-political power is occurring after eight (8) years of incompetent leadership of George Bush.
Iraq seems to be passed any hopes of saving since politically, we are destined to withdraw (Obama) or sustain an eventually small but fortified force to prevent a total radical takeover of the country (McCain). Victory in Iraq was attainable before the surge, with the application of a much larger force, a force which would have required a military draft or stepped up efforts of obtaining recruits and paying for more mercenaries. The allied forces of 140,000 troops simply weren’t enough, and Bush made a terrible mistake of playing the middle ground- afraid to withdraw, thus allowing radical forces to take over in Iraq, or- admitting that the size of forces to win in Iraq was grossly underestimated by Former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. An immediate increase of troops to 400,000-500,000 troops was clearly necessary to win and HOLD- territory in Iraq, until such time that economic stability could be restored and a new “appointed” government could assume power over time. The theatre in Afghanistan is a repeat of Iraq, the U.S. and its NATO allies not committing the resources to achieve sustained victory, but instead, a politically influence middle-ground of limited forces which achieves no lasting victory.
Those are two direct battle grounds being lost to the enemy- where, with simply a larger force and a President with guts would attain the quick victories Bush thought he had in the beginning. Bush’s reaction to play the safe middle ground of limited resources for wars seem to reflect the mentality that made him “run” from his Vietnam war combat obligations to the safety of the national guard.
The “indirect” battle ground of Georgia was a humiliating loss for America. The Georgian forces were being trained and supplied by the U.S. and Georgia’s army had almost 200 tanks at their disposal. With the Russian offensive to take back Ossetia and Abkhazia the Georgian army ran away as fast as they could, not even stopping to secure or evacuate its citizens. As this author has spent many years under shelling and open armed conflict, I’ve never seen trained soldiers run away as fast as the Georgians did as when the Serbian militias ran away from the Croatian offensives in the Krajina’s in 1995. The Georgians didn’t even attempt to fight back, but just ran away, making years of American training and spending almost 7% of the GNP on the military- a terrible waste. The flipside of course, was giving more impetus to Putin’s recent comments about a “multi-polar” world.
The U.S. is also loosing North Korea, as they have started their reactors once again and rebuilding the destroyed water cooler required to make plutonium. This week they will test fire several missiles- the means to deliver nuclear weapons.
Venezuela’s Chavez has been taking advantage of the “multi-polar” environment by recently looking to Russia as an important ally. Chavez will host Russian naval ships visiting Venezuela, and intelligence seems to indicate that Chavez will be a major Russian arms buyer and could seek missile and nuclear technology from a willing Russia.
The Bush Administration went from a tough talking cowboy, Iraq invading neo-con phalanx to a wet noodle, loosing wars on all fronts and plunging America into a financial meltdown. A new administration must reconstitute American power by vastly increasing U.S. conventional forces- troop levels, as well as a diplomatic offensive of speaking to our enemies- North Korea, Iran and Al Qaeda- directly- who but your enemies to you speak to ? This author is afraid that Obama is offering only the diplomatic tool but will shun the idea of actually increasing our conventional forces ( in itself a giant mistake by the Clinton administration during the drawdown after the Cold War) and McCain will not have the mandate to increase the size of the military. With this in mind, it seems the only conclusion can be that the near term will see a continued decline in American world power and ever more states seeking to challenge the U.S. to obtain regional power- Iran, Russia, Venezuela and China.