Phony War: The president's policy does not comport with the valor and sacrifice of his troops - George W. Bush and the war on terrorism

National Review, April 22, 2002 by Mark Helprin

Just when America has awakened, what possible explanation is there for flat-lining defense? Is the policy in any way justifiable? Its authors believe that it is, because they think they have a magic bullet.

They will say that war has changed, this war is different, and the revolution in military affairs makes weapons so many times more accurate that correspondingly fewer are needed. Thus, historical comparison is no longer valid, and advocacy of Cold War procurement patterns rather than "transformation" is like advocacy of the horse over the tank. Prolonging the old ways for which they are required, massive expenditures are actually harmful, and so on. Were these arguments as true as the aim of the weapons to which they refer, they would not be inconvenienced by persistent reality.

The new military technology is indeed many times more accurate and efficient than the old, but also many times more expensive. And even if precision guidance and a luminous picture of battle make, let us say, an F-16 ten times more capable than its earliest prototype, the numbers of F-16s cannot be reduced concomitantly, because one F-16 cannot be in ten places at once. Nor will it be mechanically ten times as reliable, and although it may be equivalent in some senses to ten aircraft, when it goes down nine aircraft do not remain. Most of the new systems, which contrary to much expert belief are not revolutionary but the logical and continuing development of the Cold War arsenal, depend upon vulnerable electronic links many of which are in orbit, adding to their cost the cost of dominating space. And it should be clear from many prosaic examples such as the strain upon the Air Force just to keep a few planes over New York and Washington that military transformation is hardly the panacea its partisans claim. Whatever its magic, it still must have customary, conventional, expensive support.

Though sharpened in the competition for scarce resources during the Clinton years, why has the destructive contest between "reformers" and "traditionalists" been allowed to continue in a time of war? If it was a strategy of divide and conquer, to keep the military in check, is that necessary for Mr. Clinton's Republican successor? If it is a result of the managerial ethos, in which the object is to accomplish a task with minimal investment, is it not a wholly gratuitous sin to stake the defense of a nation on a philosophy of business? Military transformation is essential, but no more so than military fundamentals. Especially in time of war, the president should be not the arbiter between them but the advocate of both. Clearly we should have had and could have had the mass, munitions stocks, strength in reserve, and fleet to have suppressed a Saudi veto and overwhelmed Iraq as we simultaneously campaigned in Afghanistan. Instead we are forced to play extenuating games with a rogue regime in possession of weapons of mass destruction. As for China when it rises, which may not be long from now, we can only run from a land war, and unless we double the size of the Navy, even those among us who are old may live to see our Asian allies fall under Chinese domination as the Stars and Stripes are thrown from the Western Pacific.