America's Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress (Stanford Security Studies) [Paperback]

Winslow Wheeler (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 27, 2009 | Series: Stanford Security Studies

America's Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress describes how America's armed forces are manned and equipped to fight, at best, enemies that do not now—and may never again—exist and to combat real enemies ineffectively at high human and material cost. Given that many regard America's military as "the best in the world," how can this be?

In answer to this question, 13 "non-partisan Pentagon insiders, retired military officers, and defense specialists" lay out an array of hard-hitting and well-documented charges against our current defense establishment. They demonstrate that the hugely expensive and excessively complex weapons embraced by the Pentagon and Congress as vital for our national defense are barely adequate for engaging in outmoded 20th century forms of warfare. They are woefully inadequate for fighting a 21st century "fourth generation" war, as we've learned so painfully in Iraq and Afghanistan. At least as disturbing is the condition of the US defense budget. Over time, policy makers of all political stripes have created budgets that have made our forces smaller, less well equipped, and less ready to fight—all at dramatically increasing cost.

Fortunately, the book's authors offer "real-world" solutions to all the problems they identify. At the same time, however, they remain pessimistic about the prospects for real change—arguing that in a system that measures merit by the amount of money spent, the reform proposals elaborated in this book are likely to meet intense resistance. As Winslow Wheeler remarks, "The changes require a president with an iron will who will require real, not cosmetic, reforms of a system determined to and skilled at countering them. It will also require a president who will stick with the process for years, continuously making decisions that will ultimately reverse the present disastrous course U.S. national security is now on. "

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The talent, judgment, and insight collected in this book are phenomenal. Over the last generation, the authors have been more right, more often, about more issues of crucial importance to American security than any other group I can think of. It is a tremendous benefit to have their views collected in one place and concentrated on the next big choices facing a new Administration. This really is a book that every serious-minded citizen should read."
—James Fallows, Atlantic Monthly

"The talent, judgment, and insight collected in this book are phenomenal. Over the last generation, the authors have been more right, more often, about more issues of crucial importance to American security than any other group I can think of. It is a tremendous benefit to have their views collected in one place and concentrated
on the next big choices facing a new Administration. This really is a book that every serious-minded citizen should read."
—James Fallows, Atlantic Monthly

About the Author

Winslow T. Wheeler worked on national security issues for 31 years for members of the U.S. Senate and for the U.S. General Accounting Office. He is Director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C. He

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Stanford Security Studies; 1 edition (March 27, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804769311
• ISBN-13: 978-0804769310
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 0.6 x 8.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,312,894 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Wake Up America February 21, 2009

By War Wagon

Format:Kindle Edition

"America's Defense Meltdown" comes to us from 13 of the best military thinkers in the U.S. today. I have been personally acquainted with two of them for 25 years, and two others for 10. Being a tactical historian and retired GI myself, I can fully vouch for the depth of their military knowledge. These consummate professionals have gone to considerable trouble to alert the new U.S. administration to unresolved (chronic) problems within the U.S. Defense Establishment. These problems are not the result of any lapse in dedication, but rather the limitations of "top-down" bureaucracy. They are most severe at the bottom echelons--where casualties are suffered and insurgencies lost. Despite Pentagon assurances to the contrary, these problems are so severe that, until they are corrected, the U.S. may never win another war.

The U.S. military is best in the world at "high-tech" 2d-Generation Warfare (2GW). Through a symbiotic relationship with the arms manufacturers, the Pentagon has come to depend more on electronic surveillance and precision munitions than tactical surprise. Though the U.S. Marine Corps switched its doctrine to 3GW in the mid-1980's, its units have yet to do much maneuvering below platoon level. U.S. expeditionary forces now face factions skilled at 4GW--that fought simultaneouly in the political, economic, psychological, and martial arenas. Such foes operate from the "bottom-up" and don't need headquarters or leaders. They cannot be stopped with drone-launched missiles that inadvertently kill civilians.

"America's Defense Meltdown" is not just another hastily conceived expose. It addresses long-standing issues that are fully referenced. This unselfish gift to "all we hold dear" offers real-world solutions not only to the new president, Congress, and governmental policy makers, but also to the Armed Forces, higher education, and industry. Anyone interested in preserving the American way of life should study it carefully.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Asia Times Review May 20, 2009

By Reader

Format:Paperback

The following review appeared in the November 27, 2008 Asia Times, written by author David Isenberg:

WASHINGTON - When it comes to the United States military establishment, all the duly anointed experts, regardless of their political ideology, hold the same conventional wisdom; namely, that it is currently the finest, most powerful, best-led, best-equipped, best-trained example in all of its history.

At a time when the US military is being used as the primary instrument to fight global terrorism such a sentiment strikes many as comforting. There is only one problem with it - it is wrong. That, at least, is the view of the 13 specialists - including former Pentagon insiders, retired military officers and defense specialists who contributed to this book.

This book is not some typical leftist jeremiad against the Congressional-military-industrial complex that former president Dwight Eisenhower famously warned against in his farewell address.

It is a sober, dispassionate, detailed, copiously documented examination of the status of the American military establishment. After reading it one can only think that it is an establishment out of and beyond control, and one that is enormously dysfunctional.

If it were any other executive branch department other than defense, its enormous intake of resources - as measured in taxpayer dollars and its negligible output in terms of unwanted, over budget weapons systems, lack of readiness and faulty strategies - would be cause for mass firings. The fact that has not happened tells one about the enormous power this bureaucracy has amassed over the decades.

To fully appreciate this book, a little history is in order. For as long as there has been an American military there have been periodic attempts to reform it. Some of these were titular and some were serious. The former were usually blue-ribbon commissions which produced reports often filed away to gather dust. The serious ones were met with fierce opposition and were fought every step of the way. If they accomplished anything, it was often only an incremental improvement over the status quo.

The last serious attempt at reforming the American military took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s after the Vietnam War. It sought to change US military strategy, planning, tactics and force structure changes in order to fight and win in a modern theater of war. The initiative wanted to significantly change how the Pentagon prepares for war, establish significantly different war-fighting concepts and the attendant force structure, and change the way weapons are developed and procured.

The argument was that sheer increases in defense spending would not guarantee greater military capability. Instead, more spending could yield even less capability if the United States were to continue to buy expensive, complex and vulnerable weapons that were costly to operate.

The proponents of change gained prominence in the 1980s due to the increases in military spending during the Ronald Reagan years. Their key members included retired US Air Force Colonel John Boyd, whose concept of the OODA (observation, orientation, decision and action) loop has spread well beyond the military realm to business and public administration.

Another important member was Pierre Sprey. A former Department of Defense analyst, Sprey is well known as an uncompromising maverick. Another was William Lind, congressional staffer for former senator Gary Hart.

Boyd is now dead, but the others are still around and are contributors to this book, as are others such as well-known retired army officers Colonel Douglas Macgregor and Major Donald Vandergriff. And the problems they were speaking out about nearly 30 years ago have only gotten worse. Consider the following:

America's military spending is now larger in inflation-adjusted dollars than at any point since the end of World War II, and yet the army has fewer combat brigades than at any point in that period; the navy has fewer combat ships and the air force has fewer combat aircraft. The major equipment inventories for those forces are older on average than at any point since 1947. In some cases they are at all-time highs in terms of average age.

This is despite the fact that the "official", meaning less than the actual total, budget will soon hit $600 billion per year; equaling the military budgets of all other nations combined. When other relevant national security costs are added in, such as those for the Departments of Homeland Security or Veterans Affairs, or interest on the national debt for past wars, the total annual US military expenditure is a trillion dollars annually.

Despite decades of "acquisition reform", cost overruns are higher today in inflation-adjusted dollars than at any time. Not a single major weapon system has been delivered on time, on cost and as promised for performance.

Furthermore, the Pentagon refuses to tell Congress and the public how the money it receives each year is spent for the simple, if appalling, reason that it doesn't know how it is disbursed. Its bookkeeping is so bad it doesn't even know if the money is spent. This means that the American military, from the viewpoint of constitutional checks and balances, is broken.

And apparently almost nobody in Congress knows how to do real oversight. Nor does Congress or the executive branch know how to formulate an effective national security strategy.

One particularly worthy chapter deals with the way the Pentagon manages, or more accurately put, mismanages its human resources. Communism may be dead but apparently its legacy of centralization is alive and well in the Department of Defense

This is not a book that merely criticizes; the authors offer detailed solutions for the problems they describe, which are all too frequently the result of "data-free analysis and analysis-free decisions." Their recommendations are both practical and doable.

The issue is whether there will be anyone with sufficient political courage in the next administration to heed their words.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars America's (and Britain's?) Defence Meltdown October 3, 2009

By S. Coltman

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

A very thought-provoking book but one that is dangerous to read unless you already know a fair bit about defence. It is so authoratitive overall that an unwary reader can simply fall into the trap of believing every assertion when they are not all necessarily beyond dispute. One or two chapters are rather whimsical, no-one is going to send the US Marines into battle by bicycle, but if those articles are read in the spirit I think is intended they should not do too much intellectual damage.
On the whole I am convinced by the book's arguments, and many seem to apply to the British armed forces also (which is of as much interest to me). Policy makers should read this.