NY Times article. Reminds me of what the brilliant American retired official Matthew Hoh said in Dialog Works yesterday: Matthew suggested to his boss a $3000 metal detector to counter enemies to which his boss said something like 'That's too low an amount. We have a budget to blow up'. Reminds me of my own state job of the past. The management had to blow up the entire money on yearly basis on useless stuff or they won't get that money next year. So nice, fine office furniture could be replaced--just one example. Haha.
On paper, the war in Iran should not be much of a contest. The United States spends around $1 trillion a year on its military, more than 100 times as much as Iran. That money buys a vastly larger Air Force and Navy, as well as advanced weapons technologies that Iranian generals can only dream about.
In the war’s early days, the mismatch played out as one might expect. American forces destroyed much of the Iranian military. Now, however, the contest looks less one-sided. Iran
has taken control of the Strait of Hormuz, and its missiles and drones still threaten America’s allies in the region. While President Trump seems eager for a negotiated truce, Iran’s leaders do not. Somehow, the weaker nation is in the stronger negotiating position.
That reality exposes the vulnerabilities in the American way of war. Tactical success has not yielded victory. Mr. Trump’s
recklessness in conducting the war is one reason. But the problem is bigger than any single commander in chief. The United States has left itself unprepared for modern war.
America has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on ships and planes that are good at defeating competitors’ ships and planes but ineffective against cheaper, mass-produced weapons. The American economy
does not have the industrial capacity to produce enough of the weapons and equipment it does need. And the country has struggled to fix these problems because of a
sclerotic government and a
consolidated defense industry that resists change.
Three months before Mr. Trump attacked Iran, we warned that the United States was at risk of
being overmatched in the wars of the future. The last two months have shown that alarm was justified. The war in Iran, unwise as it is, should serve as a warning about the rising threats to American security and an incentive to fix them.
