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originally posted in:Sapphire
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1/23/2014 4:10:32 AM
16
TED Talk - Thomas Barnett: Let's rethink America's military strategy - how to start winning hearts and minds
So in recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, one of the biggest issues has been that the US / Coalition goes in, kicks ass, but then promptly makes everyone hate them, due to their heavy handed tactics.
What Thomas Barnett suggests, is to split the current US military into 2 forces:
The "Leviathan" force would resemble the current military, capable of toppling dictatorships in days by using the best and most lethal weaponry available. They train for war, they don't train for peacekeeping. They crush the enemy.
Following right behind them would then be the "Sys Admin" force, which would carry out the years of peacekeeping, pulling the damaged nation back onto its feet. They rebuild infrastructure, negotiate treaties between tribes, help out the locals, etc. They win the hearts and minds.
Opinion on the video / idea?
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1 ReplyInteresting idea, but the military is already a combination of the "Leviathan" and "Sys Admin". "War is a failure of out foreign policy." America's military objective is deterrence. We do not want to engage anybody, because we know we will win, and we want to prevent it from happening in the first place. The problem with his strategy is that it assumes that America takes central control of a country it's waging war in...we did NOT want to take over Afghanistan, Iraq, Korea, Kuwait, or Vietnam. It does no good to decapitate a country's leadership, then assume that role to rebuild everything. We saw this with Iraq; we rebuilt shit, we did combat ops with their army, and we nannied them for years, and then when we leave, they are almost immediately invaded by the forces that we had just run out. Not to mention that our strategy has changed since 2005 when this was recorded. Smart ideas, but it's largely extraneous.
