Take, for example, the US desire to respond to Russia choosing to get involved in the Ukraine’s long-running civil war. Assuming that ends up with the partition of the Ukraine and the rump Ukraine (that part of the west not subsequently reclaimed by Poland) declaring neutrality and deciding against joining NATO. How would that “great power aggression” on the other side of the world have harmed the people of the United States in any way?

How did it benefit the people of the United States for US/NATO to bomb the people of Belgrade back to the Stone Age — hitting power plants and water supplies? What “great power aggression” were our Betters responding to there?

Any “great power” war these days is going to end up in nuclear devastation. Our troops will get nuked, no matter whether they are already on the other side of the world, in transit, or in the US. So will the rest of us. That is why we should be focusing on repairing our own society, and avoiding pumping up conflicts elsewhere.

“The United States must have nearly all of the military forces required to defend against great-power aggression right where war might occur,” because they would come under immediate attack once they began their multiweek mobilization across the planet, if they were stationed back in the States.

And look at what he wants to do with those new forces: “… the United States must have nearly all of the military forces required to defend against great-power aggression right where war might occur.”

So we need extra forces for expensive pre-positioning. And where might that be? In Cuba, perhaps — a la Cuban Missile Crisis? Or in Hong Kong? Or Taiwan? Or the Ukraine –even as the Ukrainian rulers were fighting a civil war against what they considered the wrong kind of Ukrainian?

Or perhaps Turkey decides to finally settle the issues with Greece? What about the running sore of Cyprus? Or maybe China starts arming up Venezuela with nuclear missiles, and Brazil takes exception? What if the civil war that NATO started in Libya gets out of control — does the US need forces in Tunisia or Egypt or both? What if they don’t want pre-positioned US forces? And let’s not even talk about the potential for Russia or China to start stirring things up in Sub-Saharan Africa.

No, the solution is to quit pretending that the bankrupt US can continue to be the world’s unpaid policeman. It is time to cut all those international entanglements and focus on repairing the damage the Political Class has done to the US over the last several decades.

He spent many days from 2014–2018 in Ukraine with the Ukrainian army, bringing back some shrapnel from Grad strike as proof.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CMby_WPjk4&t=1593s

We have our problems, but Brose et al., believe me, don’t understand them or the solutions.

And the Russian army is prepared for peer conflict, and we gutted our peer-conflict army of the 1980s and ’90s to try and make Iraqis and Afghans into SWPLS or who knows what.

Nearly all our Stinger Avenger units, for instance, are in the National Guard. I’ve served decades and never seen a Stinger.

We got rid of our EW (Electronic Warfare) to do “Cyber Security” because that’s where the money is, but it has nothing to do with the Battlefield. Meanwhile the Russians can, from the ground, with 2 trucks, jam an AWACS from 300 km. We can go on.

We. Are. Not. Prepared.

In any case, I think Brose is focused on Naval and Air and China. As it happens, it’s land war with Russia on the way to perhaps nuclear war?

He doesn’t look like too many fights in the schoolyard either.

The problem is not that America is spending too little on defense. The problem is that America is playing a losing game. Over many decades we have built our military around small numbers of large, expensive, exquisite, heavily manned, and hard-to-replace platforms that struggle to close the kill chain as one battle network.

And all of this would be pointless, because China increasingly controls the supply of manufactured goods to the US. Our Betters have turned the US into a Cargo Cult economy, waiting for the next delivery of goodies from overseas. Fighting wars with guns is unnecessary if you are the country which makes everything the rest of the world needs.

Our problem is not military — it is the need to rebuild a productive economy after decades of destructive financialization.