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<H1 class=smallText align=center><FONT size=4><SPAN id=ppt19372167>From blunders
in Vietnam to all over Latin America a</SPAN><SPAN>ll the continuous strategic
and practical foreign policy mistakes of the US seldom became critical to its
overall existence. The reason: Solid USA economic Power. For years President
Reagan's CIA knew that the Soviet Union was economically broke. So, with
the Holy Aliance between him and the Pope, all that US had to do was to up
the expensive military weapons space program and the Soviets had to
capitulate. Being economicaly weak they could not keep up.
</SPAN></FONT></H1>
<H1 class=smallText align=center><SPAN><FONT size=4>Today we are in he middle of
daily abandoning the principles of capitalism for the stupidity of socialism. We
are destroying a lot of what made the US great and strong. At this pace of
printing money et al, we will be broke. Maybe we are already. If
we get there, life as we know it will change. We would be within the
constrains of not being able of making any mistakes. </FONT></SPAN></H1>
<H1 class=smallText align=center><SPAN><FONT size=4>Please read this article and
while you are doing so, think of the proximity of Cuba and all the counries
inmediate to he south.</FONT></SPAN></H1>
<H1 class=smallText align=center><SPAN><FONT size=4>Miguel
Uria</FONT></SPAN></H1>
<H1 class=smallText align=center><SPAN><FONT size=7>China, Iran Creating 'No-Go'
Zones to Thwart U.S. Military Power</FONT></SPAN></H1>
<H1 class=smallText align=center><SPAN><FONT size=7>by </FONT></SPAN></H1>
<H1 class=smallText align=center><SPAN><FONT size=7>David
Wood</FONT></SPAN></H1>
<DIV class=apdttitle sizset="63" sizcache="172">Posted: 03/1/10 <SPAN
sizset="63" sizcache="172"><A
href="http://www.politicsdaily.com/category/national-security/">National
Security</A></SPAN> <!-- <span class="apfutitle">Filed Under: </span> --><!-- <span class="apfulinks"> <span class="ita">Filed Under:</span><span><a href="/category/national-security/">National Security</a></span></span> --></DIV>
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<DIV class=apcont sizset="71" sizcache="172">During the Cold War, the Pentagon
built the greatest naval and air forces the world had ever seen, endowing the
United States with the superpower ability to land huge military forces anywhere
in the world, at any time, whether invited in or not.<BR><BR>So it was that
Washington, using its armada of aircraft carriers, cruise missile-launching
submarines, fast cargo ships, long-range bombers, airlifters, and air refueling
fighters, could eject the Iraqis from Kuwait (1991), bomb Serbia (1999), kick
over the Taliban regime in Afghanistan (2001), and knock off Saddam and his
cronies (2003). Everybody else had to meekly follow along (or sit on the
sidelines).<BR><BR>But now the party's over. The United States, Pentagon
strategists say, is quickly losing its ability to barge in without permission.
Potential target countries and even some lukewarm allies are figuring out
ingenious ways to blunt American power without trying to meet it head-on, using
a combination of high-tech and low-tech jujitsu.<SPAN
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<DIV></DIV></SPAN><BR><BR>At the same time, U.S. naval and air forces have been
shrinking under the weight of ever more expensive hardware. It's no longer the
case that the United States can overwhelm clever defenses with sheer
numbers.<BR><BR>As Defense Secretary Robert Gates summed up the problem this
month, countries in places where the United States has strategic interests --
including the Persian Gulf and the Pacific -- are building "s<SPAN>ophisticated,
new technologies to deny our forces access to the global commons of sea, air,
space and cyberspace.''</SPAN><BR><BR>Those innocuous words spell trouble. While
the U.S. military and strategy community is focused on Afghanistan and the fight
in Marja, others – Iran and China, to name two – are chipping away at America's
access to the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, the Persian Gulf and the
increasingly critical extraterrestrial realms.<BR><BR>"This era of U.S. military
dominance is waning at an increasing and alarming rate,'' Andrew Krepinevich, a
West Point-educated officer and former senior Pentagon strategist, writes <A
href="http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/PubLibrary/R.20100219.Why_AirSea_Battle/R.20100219.Why_AirSea_Battle.pdf">in
a new report</A>. "With the spread of advanced military technologies and their
exploitation by other militaries, especially China's People's Liberation Army
and to a far lesser extent Iran's military and Islamic Revolutionary Guards
Corps, the U.S. military's ability to preserve military access to two key areas
of vital interest, the western Pacific and the Persian Gulf, is being
increasingly challenged.''<BR><BR>At present, "there is little indication that
China or Iran intend to alter their efforts to create 'no-go' zones in the
maritime areas off their coasts,'' writes Krepinevich, president of the
non-partisan think tank, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments.<BR><BR>What will save America's bacon, Gates and others hope, is
something called the Air-Sea Battle Concept. Problem: It has yet to be
invented.<BR><BR>The most worrisome of the "area denial/anti-access'' strategies
being deployed against the United States (and others) is by China, which groups
its defenses under the term "shashoujian,'' or "assassin's mace.'' The term
refers to an ancient weapon, easily concealed by Chinese warriors and used to
cripple a more powerful attacker.<BR><BR>In its modern incarnation, Krepinevich
explains, shashoujian is a powerful combination of traditional but sophisticated
air defenses, ballistic and anti-ship missiles, and similar weapons to put at
risk nearby U.S. forces and regional bases, together with anti-satellite and
cyberwar weapons to disable U.S. reconnaissance and command-and-control
networks.<BR><BR>Dennis Blair, the top U.S. intelligence official, described
these developments in detail in a <A
href="http://intelligence.senate.gov/100202/blair.pdf">report to Congress</A>
last month, adding that taken together, they "improve China's ability to execute
an anti-access and area-denial strategy in the western Pacific.''<BR><BR>Iran's
area-denial arsenal includes coastal and inland missile batteries, ballistic
missiles to threaten U.S. bases and Arabian oil facilities, mines and
shallow-draft <A
href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/china/huangfeng.htm">missile
boats</A> that can quickly swarm around heavy, slow-moving U.S. warships. Iran's
ability to threaten any would-be invaders, or simply to shut off access to the
Gulf, would be enhanced if it acquires a nuclear weapons capability, which <A
href="http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66032/james-m-lindsay-and-ray-takeyh/after-iran-gets-the-bomb">some
analysts believe could happen</A> within President Obama's current term in
office.<BR><BR>As these new challenges have grown, America's air and naval
forces have been quietly shrinking, a function of the staggering increase in
complexity and cost of the hardware. Although other factors are at play, the
bottom line is that the Pentagon can afford fewer planes and ships because each
one costs more and more. As former Lockheed Martin chairman <A
href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Mt2z0mzB4ZsC&dq=Norman+R+Augustine&printsec=frontcover&source=an&hl=en&ei=Yl-ES9uaJtXQ8Qak-92dAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBgQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false">Norm
Augustine pointed out in 1983</A>, the cost of a fighter aircraft has quadrupled
every 10 years, since the dawn of the age of aviation.<BR><BR>The <A
href="http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66032/james-m-lindsay-and-ray-takeyh/after-iran-gets-the-bomb">F16</A>
fighter, for instance, originally cost about $35 million each (adjusted for
inflation). It is being replaced by the F-35, currently priced at $266 million
each. The pattern holds for the F-22, which the Pentagon has bought to replace
its F-15s, and the B-1 and B-2 bombers built to replace B-52s and F-111s. Small
wonder the Air Force inventory of fighter-attack planes and bombers has sagged
20 percent during the past 15 years from 2,073 to 1,649.<BR><BR>The Navy also
has fallen victim to the rising-cost, falling-inventory phenomenon. During the
Vietnam War it boasted 932 warships. By 1985 the Navy could barely maintain 571
ships (despite the Reagan administration's rallying cry of a "600-ship Navy!'').
Today's Navy has dwindled to 283 expensive warships.<BR><BR>Robert Work,
currently the under secretary of the Navy, pointed out as a private researcher
last year that not only is the current naval force inadequate for a
bust-in-the-door mission, the Navy's plans for a larger future fleet are
<EM>still</EM> inadequate – and unaffordable to boot. The Navy's planned future
fleet of 313 ships, he wrote in <A
href="http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/PubLibrary/R.20090217.The_US_Navy_Charti/R.20090217.The_US_Navy_Charti.pdf">a
major paper on naval strategy</A>, "lacks the range to face increasingly lethal,
land-based maritime reconnaissance/strike complexes (networks), or nuclear armed
adversaries.'' And, he said, it ignores the growing challenge of China's
shashoujian.<BR><BR>Anyway, Work added, "the signs are that the Navy's plans are
far too ambitious given likely future resource allocations ... the Navy needs to
scale back its current plans; they are simply too ambitious for expected future
budgets.''<BR><BR>So what's the plan? The plan is to develop a plan, for now
being called the Air-Sea Battle Concept. The idea is based loosely on a strategy
the Army came up with during the Cold War when the generals realized they were
out-manned and out-gunned by the Red Army. Their solution was <A
href="http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1984/may-jun/romjue.html">AirLand
Battle</A>, based mostly on the early work of Army Gen. Donn Starry, who
advocated using closely coordinated air and ground combat power to attack deep
into the enemy's rear at the outset of the fight, rather than waiting for the
enemy to advance up to "the front.''<BR><BR>AirLand Battle became a reality
after much headbutting among senior generals not willing to share the glory (or
the budget dollars). It arguably helped to deter Soviet aggression in Europe.
And it proved highly successful in Desert Storm and in the invasion of
Iraq.<BR><BR>The hope for Air-Sea Battle is to achieve similar synergy by
joining naval and air power with space and cyberspace war-fighting capabilities
for "defeating adversaries across the range of military operations, including
adversaries equipped with sophisticated anti-access and area denial
capabilities,'' according to the Pentagon's most recent strategic plan, the <A
href="http://www.defense.gov/QDR/">Quadrennial Defense Review</A>, published
earlier this month.<BR><BR>If that sounds vague, it's because there's not much
behind the words. A laconic sentence in the QDR hints that no one has any idea
what Air-Sea Battle might mean in practice: "As it matures, the concept will
also help guide the development of future capabilities needed for effective
power projection operations.''<BR><BR>Last fall, the leaders of the Air Force
and Navy, two services not known for cozy relations, signed an agreement to
share work on this concept.<BR><BR>They immediately recruited a small working
group, which set off on a listening tour to hear the views of senior U.S.
commanders on what Air-Sea Battle should look like.<BR><BR>While the Air-Sea
Battle task force is at work, Iran's extremist Revolutionary Guards are slowly
<A
href="http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/Clinton-Irans-Revolutionary-Guard-Gaining-Power-84484107.html">taking
over control of the government</A>, according to Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, suggesting that Iran's keep-out defenses will continue to be hardened.
And <A href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/LB09Ad01.html">China's work on
cyberwar continues</A>.<BR><BR>As all that unfolds, the Pentagon's attention
will be elsewhere. Gates has directed that the Defense Department's strategic
and budgeting focus in 2011 be directed at fighting "the wars we are in today,''
in Iraq and Afghanistan. </DIV></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>